Year-over-year inflation reached its lowest level in more than three years in July, the latest sign that the worst price spike in four decades is fading and setting up the Federal Reserve for an interest rate cut in September.

  • Tower@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    Which of course does absolutely jack shit for the price increases that have already occurred. Low inflation is not deflation.

    • yggstyle@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Take that further and you get the joke that was that AP article:

      .1% less inflation still is 2.9% inflation on top of what we still have. Year over year. Good news right?!

    • 432@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I look forward to population decline in some countries. Deflation will happen then.

      • yggstyle@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        It’s already occurring. Japan is imploding and it has been a forward indicator for our economy since about the 90s.

    • yggstyle@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Don’t worry they removed that cost metric from the CPI. That and any other metric that might actually be inflationary 😅. Don’t you feel better though? 2.9% !

      • yes_this_time@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        CPI inflation is reported higher than ‘all items’ though…

        Grocery is seeing lower inflation. Seems to have come back down to earth.

        We need wage growth to continue to outpace inflation like it has been for the past year or so.

        • yggstyle@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          I’d have to look but I think wage growth is falling again and of course there’s the skewed employment statistics that don’t factor in people working multiple jobs… You are dead on though. Inflation is sustainable if the rest of the growth is moving along with it … unfortunately ours isn’t resulting in the overheating.

      • shortwavesurfer
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        3 months ago

        Multiply that by 3 or 4 and you might get close to a real number.

          • yggstyle@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Yep. There’s a reason they exclude power, food, fuel etc from those calculations… it looks fine on paper but reality is obviously quite different.

        • yggstyle@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Yeah, that’s the joke lol. If you just don’t add anything inflationary it magically is “under control.”

          • shortwavesurfer
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            3 months ago

            Some inflation is not a problem. After all gold inflation is 1.6-1.8% per year according to the World Gold Council and many cryptos such as Monero have even less than that. Replacement levels of inflation are not a bad thing but uncontrolled fiat printing definitely is. Giving one group of humans the ability to control what everybody sees as money is guaranteed to cause that group of humans to act in their own self-interest and hurt everyone else.

            • yggstyle@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              Inflation isn’t inherently bad: an overheated economy, which is the result of inflation, is. This is basically where we are right now. Had the fed not gotten cold feet when they halted the rate increases we’d be in a far better position right now (sans a few banks with bad balance sheets.)

              The fiat currency discussion gets murky quickly as most everything’s value is relative and derived from something else’s value. Crypto is no different and arguably has its own set of issues.

              Ultimately regardless of the currency we as a world introduced a ton of what should have been temporary wealth during the COVID period into the markets to save lives and businesses. That money needs to go away to restore balance to the economies. This means a negative inflation rate, or put differently, deflation.

              • shortwavesurfer
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                3 months ago

                But deflation is a boogeyman according to them and they do not want that to occur and strive to do everything in their powers to prevent it.

    • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyz
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      3 months ago

      Then how do hedge funds get the free money to gamble with since apparently that’s what the world economy is built on.

      • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        They still can borrow, but they need to actually do some level of due diligence that what they throw money at can actually succeed.

      • yggstyle@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        They abuse the market mechanics. Same as banks. This is why the carry trade is so levered up. Our borrowing rate here is far higher than in Japan so they are backing Japanese borrowing with US assets for additional leverage and then loaning to us investors against that capital. It’s a clusterfuck.

    • yes_this_time@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      The economy is important. Rates will go lower to protect that.

      Central banks I think need to consider a higher neutral rate. Interest rates were too low for too long to try and move GDP growth. In retrospect not a great policy, as it led to a decade or so of inflation in stocks markets and housing.

      Why do anything of value if I can just leverage at low rates and dump borrowed money into stocks and real estate?

      Central banks tend to be arms reach from government, but maybe they should be doing less and the government more.

      GDP growth low? Invest in infrastructure and research. High inflation? Increase taxes.

      • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        The economy is doing ok though, inflation is still up. Wallstreet wants lower rates, but listening to them got us extended 0% that ultimately was bad for the economy.

        Interest rates going up and forcing over leveraged companies into bankruptcy is also good for the economy.

        • yes_this_time@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Maybe tough to get a concensus on where the economy is going to be, a bit of reading tea leaves.

          Regardless, agreed on extended 0% being problematic. Out of all the factors dragging us down:

          interest rate history, pandemic, demographic shifts, climate change, global instability…

          It could be interest rates that are having the largest impact today. Considering it caused such a large wealth transfer, equity inflation, and a drag on productivity.

      • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyz
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        3 months ago

        The whole point of the government not doing anything is that only the central bank can solve inflation through rate hikes.

        This ensures further wealth concentration, if the government wasn’t lame, more equitable and sane outcomes would be possible.

  • yggstyle@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    The AP clearly has no idea how to read charts or infer data. The rate cuts aren’t coming. CPI is still over or target rate of 2% YoY… and we are down a massive (checks notes) .1% from 3% after they mutilated the calculations to get the 3%

    It’s not moving. Sticky inflation. Stagnant. Stag-flation if you prefer.

    Edit: I seem to have offended some AP writers.