We know this is coming. Instead of stories basically looking for any grain of good news as well as headlines deceptively suggesting things are better than they appear, we will start to see the opposite. This latest headline is a great example:
The Producer Price Index, a measurement of average price changes seen by producers and manufacturers, rose 0.2% on a monthly basis, marking an acceleration from September, when prices ticked up 0.1% for the month.
So to be clear. The measure rose from 0.1% to 0.2% which is quite literally the smallest amount it could have raised. If we are looking for inflation to settle in around 2% (which is the goal right now), then some of your months should be 0.1% and some are probably going to be 0.2%. This is not necessarily "heating up" and in fact it might actually be difficult to even determine a difference between 0.1% and 0.2%. Given that we had seen inflation at rates upwards of 7% that suggests that it was not unusual for a month to be at 0.5% or higher. I would argue that if we start seeing those sorts of numbers again, that we could say that inflation is heating up.
Funny that this is still part of what we are reporting under Joe Biden and his administration. But already, the media seems to want to change the attitude on how the economy looks. Cannot wait to see what sort of headlines will get written a few months from now after Trump is sworn in again.
Interview with billionaire owner of LA Times:
Houman David Hemmati, MD, PhD on X: "This is a huge deal: @latimes owner @DrPatSoonShiong decided to give a lengthy in person interview to @tracegallagher on @foxnewsnight @FoxNews in which he explained how the election & declining readership pushed him to revamp the entire paper. “We’ve conflated news and https://t.co/tXnheOx5wW" / X