Inflation Under Biden Reaches Staggering New Heights

By BREITBART NEWS – 12 Apr 2022 – article

My cmnt: Now the O’Biden regime has gone into full spin cycle as it washes the news clean of any truth, blaming this unprecedented, rapid inflation on Covid-19 recovery, Putin’s war in Ukraine, phases of the moon and rabies.

My cmnt: Please click this link to The True Cause of Inflation. Tells you everything clearly and briefly.

My cmnt: This is not hard. Wife and I lived thru the Carter inflation years and thought we’d never see them again. Wrong. Get a looney democrat into the presidency and it can – and did – happen in an instance. Inflation is caused by the government (democrats in the House) led by Biden (or whoever pulls his strings) printing money out of thin air to buy off the people. You can’t print money without a concurrent increase in productivity in the economy. When you do – walla (quoting Otis – Ned Beatty) – you get inflation.

My cmnt: When the democrats indiscriminately sent out large sums of money to everyone in the country (including illegal aliens) – regardless of need – they created inflation by artificially stimulating the spending that was not needed. My wife and I, our sons and their wives and children, and virtually everyone we know – all rcv’d taxpayer-borrowed money in the mail. None of us were unemployed nor had any revenue interruption from the unnecessary Covid lockdowns. My wife is in dentistry and was briefly shutdown by the democrats but she rcv’d generous unemployment to compensate for the lost wages. Yet, like millions of others, we got borrowed, printed money dumped in our laps for no other reason than the democrats will use any excuse to give out other people’s money.

My cmnt: Second, oil is the lifeblood of the economy. You cut it off – like Biden did – and you get rapid price increases – i.e., inflation. When the cost of transporting all the goods and services in the country goes up, so does the price of everything. Duh.

My cmnt: And the third big cause of our inflation is government (i.e., democrat) unnecessary regulations on producing everything. Make it harder to do business and the price goes up. Really not hard to understand at all.

My cmnt: Of course before all of this is the Fraud Fauci national (selective) shutdown of the economy. A total waste and abuse of power thru lies about Covid-19.

My cmnt: We have the best economy under President Trump in 60 years and by stealing the election thru vote fraud we have a damn democrat ruin it in a matter of months. Sickening isn’t it. People, please, don’t ever elect democrats to anything.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Inflation soared over the past year at its fastest pace in more than 40 years, with costs for food, gasoline, housing, and other necessities squeezing American consumers and wiping out the pay raises that many people have received.

The Labor Department said Tuesday that its consumer price index jumped 8.5% in March from 12 months earlier — the biggest year-over-year increase since December 1981. Prices have been driven up by bottlenecked supply chains, robust consumer demand and disruptions to global food and energy markets worsened by Russia’s war against Ukraine.

The government’s report also showed that inflation rose 1.2% from February to March, up from a 0.8% increase from January to February.

The March inflation numbers were the first to capture the full surge in gasoline prices that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. Moscow’s brutal attacks have triggered far-reaching Western sanctions against the Russian economy and have disrupted global food and energy markets. According to AAA, the average price of a gallon of gasoline — $4.10 — is up 43% from a year ago, though it has fallen back in the past couple of weeks.

The escalation of energy prices has led to higher transportation costs for the shipment of goods and components across the economy, which, in turn, has contributed to higher prices for consumers.

The latest evidence of accelerating prices will solidify expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates aggressively in the coming months to try to slow borrowing and spending and tame inflation. The financial markets now foresee much steeper rate hikes this year than Fed officials had signaled as recently as last month.

Even before Russia’s war further spurred price increases, robust consumer spending, steady pay raises and chronic supply shortages had sent U.S. consumer inflation to its highest level in four decades. In addition, housing costs, which make up about a third of the consumer price index, have escalated, a trend that seems unlikely to reverse anytime soon.

Economists point out that as the economy has emerged from the depths of the pandemic, consumers have been gradually broadening their spending beyond goods to include more services. A result is that high inflation, which at first had reflected mainly a shortage of goods — from cars and furniture to electronics and sports equipment — has been emerging in services, too, like travel, health care and entertainment.

The expected fast pace of the Fed’s rate increases will make loans sharply more expensive for consumers and businesses. Mortgage rates, in particular, though not directly influenced by the Fed, have rocketed higher in recent weeks, making home buying more expensive. Many economists say they worry that the Fed has waited too long to begin raising rates and might end up acting so aggressively as to trigger a recession.

For now, the economy as a whole remains solid, with unemployment near 50-year lows and job openings near record highs. Still, rocketing inflation, with its impact on Americans’ daily lives, is posing a political threat to President Joe Biden and his Democratic allies as they seek to keep control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.

Economists generally express doubt that even the sharp rate hikes that are expected from the Fed will manage to reduce inflation anywhere near the central bank’s 2% annual target by the end of this year. Tilley, Wilmington Trust economist, said he expects year-over-year consumer inflation to still be 4.5% by the end of 2020. Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he had forecast a much lower 3% rate.

Inflation, which had been largely under control for four decades, began to accelerate last spring as the U.S. and global economies rebounded with unexpected speed and strength from the brief but devastating coronavirus recession that began in the spring of 2020.

The recovery, fueled by huge infusions of government spending and super-low interest rates, caught businesses by surprise, forcing them to scramble to meet surging customer demand. Factories, ports and freight yards struggled to keep up, leading to chronic shipping delays and price spikes.

Critics also blame, in part, the Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion March 2021 stimulus program, which included $1,400 relief checks for most households, for helping overheat an already sizzling economy.

Many Americans have been receiving pay increases, but the pace of inflation has more than wiped out those gains for most people. In February, after accounting for inflation, average hourly wages fell 2.5% from a year earlier. It was the 11th straight monthly drop in inflation-adjusted wages.

Producer Prices Surge 11.2% in March on Higher Energy Costs

By AP – 13 Apr 2022 – on Breitbart news

WASHINGTON (AP) — The surging cost of energy pushed wholesale prices up a record 11.2% last month from a year earlier — another sign that inflationary pressure is widespread in the U.S. economy.

The Labor Department said Wednesday that its producer price index — which measures inflation before it reaches consumers — climbed at the fastest year-over-year pace in records going back to 2010 and rose 1.4% from February. Energy prices, which soared after Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, were up 36.7% from March 2021.

The wholesale inflation report came out a day after the Labor Department reported that consumer prices last month jumped 8.5% from a year earlier — fastest annual clip since December 1981.

Under pressure to combat rising prices, the Federal Reserve raised ts benchmark short-term rate by a quarter-point last month and has signaled that it plans several more hikes this year.

An unexpectedly quick economic recovery from the pandemic recession of 2020 caught businesses by surprise. Their scramble to meet surging customer demand overwhelmed factories, ports and freight yards. The Ukraine war and draconian COVID-19 lockdowns in China have further disrupted supply chains over the past month.

“With a new wave of lockdowns in China and the war in Ukraine raging on … risks to the inflation outlook remain firmly to the upside,” economists Mahir Rasheed and Kathy Bostjancic of Oxford Economics wrote in a research report.

Bidenflation: Amazon Smacks Third-Party Sellers with ‘Fuel and Inflation Surcharge’

By LUCAS NOLAN – 14 Apr 2022 – for Breitbart.news

The price of products on Amazon is likely to increase following the company’s introduction of a five percent “fuel and inflation surcharge” for sellers using Amazon’s fulfillment services.

The Verge reports that Amazon plans to offset rising fuel and inflation costs by shifting them to third-party sellers in the United States in the next month. Amazon will reportedly be charging sellers that use Amazon’s fulfillment services a five percent “fuel and inflation surcharge” that will go into effect on April 28.

Amazon currently has two million third-party sellers on its platform; Jungle Scout reports that 89 percent of third-party sellers use Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) to gain access to the company’s supply chain, warehouses, and shipping services.

An Amazon spokesperson told CNBC in a statement: “In 2022, we expected a return to normalcy as Covid-19 restrictions around the world eased, but fuel and inflation have presented further challenges. It is still unclear if these inflationary costs will go up or down, or for how long they will persist, so rather than a permanent fee change, we will be employing a fuel and inflation surcharge for the first time — a mechanism broadly used across supply chain providers.”

Amazon is not the only company to charge a fuel surcharge on its services, FedEx changes a surcharge of 49 cents per unit while UP charges 42 cents. In comparison, Amazon’s surcharge will work out at around 24 cents.

U.S. inflation reached 8.5 percent in March while gas prices are up 48 percent since last year according to recent reports. The end result of this is that Amazon shoppers will likely be paying more for the same items as third-party sellers increase their prices to keep up with Amazon’s fees.

Read more at the Verge here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com