Peter's Blog

Federal Reserve Vice Chair Philip Jefferson delivered remarks titled “The U.S. Economy and Monetary Policy” on October 1st at the Darden School of Business in Charlottesville, Virginia, offering the latest in a string of recent admissions from Fed officials that inflation has run hot for years without a clear resolution in sight. Jefferson acknowledged that […]

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday that the Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand rose 0.4% in August, a sharp acceleration from July’s 0.1% gain and June’s 0.1% decline. On an unadjusted basis, wholesale prices are up 5.4% over the past 12 months, more than double the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. The report […]

Inflation’s embers flared again in May, dashing hopes that last year’s price scare was fading. The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) rose 0.5 percent for the month, lifting the headline rate to 4.2 percent year-over-year and marking a second straight acceleration. Energy was the chief culprit, and the renewed heat pushed safe-haven […]

April’s Consumer Price Index offered scant comfort to households or policymakers, with headline prices rising 0.6 percent for the month and 3.8 percent from a year earlier, according to Wednesday’s Bureau of Labor Statistics release. Though the monthly pace eased from March’s blistering 0.9 percent gain, the yearly rate accelerated, underscoring that the inflation fire […]

With the prospect of peace on the horizon, free-market economists can rest easier knowing the worst of the Iran war may be over. Even if the war is really over, the state will still use it as a scapegoat for the Federal Reserve’s latest inflationary policies. The following article was originally published by the Mises […]

On Friday’s episode of The Peter Schiff Show, Peter lays out a bleak picture for the near-term U.S. economy: weak job gains, rising energy costs, and mounting commodity inflation that threaten to push real interest rates down and gold up. He also ties in geopolitical risks and a recent Supreme Court decision on tariffs to […]

Inflation’s embers refused to cool in February, with the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers edging 0.3 percent higher after January’s 0.2 percent bump. Headline prices now stand 2.4 percent above year-ago levels, still north of the Federal Reserve’s vaunted 2 percent target. Core inflation, which strips out the volatile food and energy categories […]

Upstream price pressures roared back in July, according to Thursday’s Producer Price Index (PPI) release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The headline PPI for final demand leapt 0.9 percent after a flat reading in June. Year-over-year, producer prices are now 3.3 percent higher, the largest 12-month increase since February. The data landed just 2 […]

Spring’s brief lull in price pressure has faded. At 8:30 a.m. ET, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that headline CPI rose 0.3 percent in June and 2.7 percent year over year, up from May’s 2.4 percent pace and higher than the 2.6% consensus forecast. Core CPI—excluding food and energy—advanced 0.2 percent on the month […]

This analysis takes the BLS inflation data and recalculates the percentage changes at the category level to get unrounded numbers. The total number ties to the BLS, but it gives more detail at the granular level.