federal reserve

Gas Price Drop Deflates Consumer Price Index

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The Consumer Price Index dropped -07% for January, the largest monthly drop since December 2008 and the steepest monthly decline in a series of seven.  Gasoline prices plummeted -18.7%, the steepest since December 2008.  The drop in gas overwhelmed the Consumer Price Index and was the cause of the overall drop.

Low Inflation On Much More than Gas as CPI Declines -0.4%

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The monthly Consumer Price Index dropped -04% for December, the largest monthly drop since 2008  Once again it's all about falling oil prices.  Gasoline prices declined the steepest since December 2008.  Inflation with gas and food removed flat-lined and had no change from last month.   CPI measures inflation, or price increases.

 

The Federal Reserve Destroyed Our Site

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Dear Economic Populist Readers.  You may have noticed we have stopped publishing articles.  This is because the Saint Louis Federal Reserve Fred Graph system was changed without even a warning.  They removed the very fast, professional economic graphing system and API, which we used heavily, and replaced it with more of a toy.

Is the Fed's Quantitative Easing Pushing Up Home Prices?

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Is the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing over inflating housing prices?  According to one Fed Official they aren't  Yet the Federal Reserve is buying 50% of mortgage backed securities, keeping mortgage interest rates at record lows and affecting pricing on mortgage backed securities themselves.

 

The Fed's Economic Projections and Bernanke Conference

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The Federal Reserve FOMC released their updated economic projections and frankly they are weird.  GDP estimates were lowered yet the official unemployment rate projections were also lowered.  The rule of economic law is lower economic growth means less jobs and hires so how one can have subdued GDP with better unemployment figures is none too clear.

QE3 Addicts Scour FOMC Meeting Minutes Looking for Their Fix

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Quantitative easing is the buying of various securities to increase the money supply. In a round about way, this increases liquidity at banks, stuffs them with capital, which theoretically banks are then supposed to turn around and increase lending to regular people.

The amount of text written on FOMC meeting minutes is astounding. This is a conversation from a meeting almost a month old where no action was taken. In a game of Where's Waldo, people pour over the words, hunting for even a trace of more quantitative easing. This time they found it and pounced.

Here is the latest FOMC meeting minutes phrase that has quantitative easing addicts salivating and foaming at the mouth.

Many members judged that additional monetary accommodation would likely be warranted fairly soon unless incoming information pointed to a substantial and sustainable strengthening in the pace of the economic recovery.

The problem, with this is taking comments out of context from meeting minutes. Some economic indicators improved after July 31st for one and the Fed is concerned about deterioration. Right after the above sentence is this:

Don't Let the Big Fat Zero for January 2012 Industrial Production Fool You

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The Federal Reserve's Industrial Production & Capacity Utilization report, G.17, shows zero change in industrial production for January 2012. The culprit was utilities and the Fed blames the weather. Warming temperatures in winter cause home energy production to drop beyond their typical output levels. The big fat industrial production zero hides some very promising changes.

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