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World News

Inflation is not nearly gas prices anymore, as value will increase broaden throughout the economic system

The market reaction to CPI numbers is justified, says Wells Fargo's Paul Christopher

A person shops at a supermarket as inflation impacted consumer prices in New York City, June 10, 2022.

Andrew Kelly | Reuters

For most of the year, the inflation narrative among many economists and policymakers was that it was essentially a food and fuel problem. Once supply chains eased and gas prices eased, the reasoning went, this would help lower food costs and in turn ease price pressures across the economy.

However, August’s CPI figures put that narrative to the test, with widening increases now suggesting that inflation may be more stubborn and firm than previously thought.

CPI excluding food and energy prices — known as core inflation — rose 0.6% for the month, double the Dow Jones estimate, leading to a 6.3% year-on-year increase in the cost of living. Including food and energy, the index rose 0.1% on a monthly basis and a robust 8.3% on a 12-month basis.

Just as importantly, the source of the gain wasn’t gasoline, which fell 10.6% for the month. While the fall in energy prices over the summer helped dampen inflation headlines, it failed to quell fears that inflation will remain a problem for some time to come.

The expansion of inflation

Instead of fuel, it was food, shelter and medical services that drove up costs in August, levying a costly tax on those who could least afford it and raising important questions about where inflation is headed from here.

“Core inflation numbers were hot across the board. The breadth of sharp price increases, from new vehicles to medical services to rent increases, everything was sharply up,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “That was the most disturbing aspect of the report.”

In fact, new car prices and medical supplies each rose 0.8% over the month. Housing costs, which include rent and various other housing-related expenses, make up almost a third of the CPI weight and rose 0.7% on the month.

Grocery costs were also a nuisance.

The Home Grocery Index, a good predictor of food prices, rose 13.5% last year, the largest such increase since March 1979. Prices of items like eggs and bread continued their meteoric rise, fueling household budgets further charged.

For medical benefits, the 0.8% monthly increase is the fastest monthly increase since October 2019. Vet costs increased 0.9% month-on-month and 10% year-on-year.

“Even things like clothing prices, which often go down, have gone up a bit [0.2%]. My view is that if they stay at these lower oil prices and assuming they don’t bounce back, it will lead to broad inflation moderation,” Zandi said. “I didn’t change my inflation forecast to go back to it [the Federal Reserve’s 2% target] to early 2024, but I’d say I stand by that forecast with less conviction.”

Why everyone is so obsessed with inflation

On a positive note, things like plane tickets, coffee, and fruit have all come down in price again. A survey released earlier this week by the New York Fed showed consumers are less concerned about inflation, although they still expect the rate to hover at 5.7% a year from now. There are also signs that supply chain pressures are easing, which should at least be disinflationary.

Higher oil possible

But about three-quarters of the CPI stayed above 4% year-on-year with inflation, reflecting a longer-term trend that belies the idea of ​​”temporary” inflation that the White House and Fed had been pushing.

And low energy prices are not a matter of course.

The US and other G-7 countries say they intend to introduce price controls on Russian oil exports from December 5, potentially inviting retaliatory action that could lead to price hikes later in the year.

“Should Moscow halt all natural gas and oil exports to the European Union, the United States and the United Kingdom, then there is a strong possibility that oil prices will retest the highs reached in June and move the average price of ordinary gas significantly higher again currently $3.70 per gallon,” said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM.

Brusuelas added that even if housing is in a slump and a possible recession, he thinks the price declines there are unlikely to carry through as housing has “about a good year to go before the data in this critical ecosystem”.

With so much inflation in the pipeline, the big economic question is how far the Fed will go with raising rates. Markets are banking on the central bank raising interest rates by at least 0.75 percentage point next week, which would take the fed funds rate to its highest level since early 2007.

“Two percent stands for price stability. That’s her goal. But how do they get there without breaking something,” said Quincy Krosby, chief equity strategist at LPL Financial. “The Fed is not done yet. The road to 2% will be difficult. Overall, we should see inflation continue to fall. But at what point do they stop?”

Concerns about acceleration in core inflation are growing

Categories
Health

The Instances’s E-newsletter The Veggie Is not Simply For Vegetarians

The Times's Newsletter The Veggie Isn't Just For Vegetarians

Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and gives a behind-the-scenes look at how our journalism comes together.

Tejal Rao, the New York Times California restaurant critic, hired a refrigerator full of ’70s veggie muppets this month to announce her new vegetarian newsletter on Twitter – and her followers couldn’t get enough of the sauerkraut, corn, carrots and coconuts on the shelves.

That’s the welcoming spirit that Ms. Rao wants to bring to her newsletter, The Veggie, which debuted last week and comes out every Thursday. It’s part of the Times’ effort to help readers who want to eat more vegetables.

In a conversation, Ms. Rao spoke about her ambitions for the newsletter, revealed some rejected titles, and revealed the one vegetable she can’t stand.

You are an omnivore – when did you start to eat vegetarian?

I have been vegetarian my whole life. My parents both cooked a lot at home and it was probably vegetarian at least a couple of times a week – a Gujarati-style dal with rice and a vegetable or two, or something French or Italian based on dried lentils and starch and seasonal vegetables. Meat and seafood were part of the week, but they weren’t necessary at every meal and weren’t always the focus of the meal.

How has your diet changed during the pandemic?

When the supply chain collapsed, I bought a lot less meat and fish. I signed up for a Farmbox delivery every other week and mostly cooked vegetables and that really realigned me as a cook.

Views of vegetarian recipes on NYT Cooking have increased nearly 50 percent in the past year. Did the idea for this newsletter come before the pandemic or did it arise from the increasing interest in vegetarian content?

My editors have been talking about putting out more and more vegetarian recipes for years, and I’ve long wanted to do The Times’ newsletter, but this data is still useful because it suggests an instant appetite for work.

Is the newsletter aimed at long-time vegetarians or at people who may not be vegetarians but would like to incorporate more vegetables into their diet?

It’s for anyone with an interest. But I have to admit, I especially love the idea of ​​convincing people who think they are not interested in vegetarian food at all that it is them, that it is tasty, that it is accessible, that it is great for them is.

Was it always called The Veggie?

One of the rejected names was Totally Herbaceous which didn’t get very far because it’s too long and very silly and nobody liked it. We all liked The Veggie right away – it just felt warm, friendly and welcoming. And that idea came from Owen Dodd, an engineer who worked on The Veggie in his early days. A lot of the rejected names didn’t feel right because they connoted diet culture in some small, insidious way, and I absolutely didn’t want to do that – The Veggie isn’t about abstinence, it’s about feasting.

Is there still a social stigma about being a vegetarian?

I think it depends on where you are, who you hang out with and what you have access to, but to me it feels so misguided and so boring.

It seems like the Times is adding more vegetarian recipes to its coverage these days. If this is the case?

We are publishing fewer meat recipes than before and the number of vegetarian recipes will continue to grow.

You live on the west coast. How does California’s vegetarian scene compare to New York City?

There is a really lively vegetarian and vegan scene here, from baking to cheese making to fast food. I covered a bit about it – I wrote an article about vegan taquerias last year. But the really exciting thing is that it doesn’t just happen here.

Confession time: are there any vegetables that you really dislike?

Raw peppers, something about the aroma and wateriness is a little repulsive to me. I love them cooked however! Just not raw.

Oh no! They are my favorite vegetables!

Why?

They explode with crispy, juicy goodness. The oranges and yellows are the best.

Hm no. [Laughs]

To sign up to receive The Veggie, click here.

Categories
Politics

Why America Isn’t Getting the Jan. 6 Investigation It Wants

Why America Isn’t Getting the Jan. 6 Investigation It Needs

Some of this sentiment reflects how conservative media has covered — or, perhaps, not covered — the siege. The events of Jan. 6 have been mentioned about four times as often on CNN and MSNBC as on Fox News, according to an analysis of television news clips. And it certainly reflects how dominant partisanship has become in our politics.

But these beliefs also show how difficult it will be for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to persuade large parts of the country that her select committee is conducting a truthful and nonpartisan investigation into the Jan. 6 riot. Republicans in Congress can opt out of participating in a bipartisan investigation into one of the most shocking events in the history of American politics with little fear of backlash from their base. In fact, many of their voters don’t want to hear much about the Jan. 6 attack at all.

Others are clearly looking for their leaders to defend rioters’ actions that day. That’s partly why Ms. Pelosi rejected two of Representative Kevin McCarthy’s picks for the committee, prompting Mr. McCarthy, the minority leader, to pull all of his Republican nominations from the panel.

Those two selections, Representatives Jim Banks of Indiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio, had openly expressed hostility to the mission of the committee and trafficked in revisionist history about the siege, and they may be material witnesses to the events leading up to that day.

Would keeping Mr. Jordan and Mr. Banks on the committee have helped build credibility for the effort among Republican voters? That seems unlikely, given that both had already broadcast their intention to undermine the effort.

Ms. Pelosi can still argue that her panel is bipartisan. It will include Representative Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, and reports suggest that she could add Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, also a Republican. Both lawmakers are reviled by their party’s base for attacking Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the election and are unlikely to be seen as credible messengers by many Republicans.

Mr. McCarthy, meanwhile, has vowed to conduct his own investigation.

So after months of negotiation, the end result is likely to be two panels, one led by Democrats and the other by Republicans. It’s a situation that encapsulates our divided political moment: Whatever the process, the testimony or the findings, the results of either committee are unlikely to be trusted by voters from the opposing party. And reaching any kind of national consensus about what happened on that awful day feels like as much of a fantasy as any false-flag conspiracy theory.

Categories
Health

CDC group says there is not sufficient information but to suggest booster pictures

CDC group says there isn't enough data yet to recommend booster shots

A group of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientists said Wednesday that currently there isn’t enough data to support recommending Covid-19 booster shots to the general population but that more-vulnerable groups, such as elderly people or transplant recipients, may need an extra dose.

The Covid-19 working group of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices didn’t rule out the possibility that the general population eventually may need booster shots if immunity from the vaccines wanes or a variant reduces the effectiveness of current shots.

“Boosters may be required for a broad population. However, it could also be that the need for boosters of Covid vaccine may only be demonstrated in some populations,” said Dr. Sarah Oliver, co-lead of the working group and a medical epidemiologist with the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

A recent study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University published in the Annals of Internal Medicine showed that booster shots may be beneficial for people with weakened immune systems. Oliver said the agency should monitor residents of long-term care facilities, elderly people, health-care workers and immunocompromised people.

The working group recommended that the CDC consider booster shots only “after evidence of declining protection,” Oliver said, meaning if the vaccines became less effective over time or antibodies guarding against Covid waned over time. The agency could also consider using booster shots if a variant emerged that substantially reduced the effectiveness of the vaccine.

Vials with Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine labels are seen in this illustration picture taken March 19, 2021.

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

“I would have to agree with the interpretation of the working group in the sense that there’s no data to support recommendations to support boosters at this time,” said Dr. Sharon Frey, a member of ACIP and clinical director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Saint Louis University Medical School. “There’s no evidence against declining protection at this time.”

But Frey said she would be open to giving a third shot to transplant patients or if infections rise in the general population, indicating a lot of breakthrough cases in fully vaccinated individuals. So far, there have been at least 3,729 breakthrough infections in the U.S. that resulted in hospitalization or death, according to CDC data.

“I think the only thing we can do at this moment is, if we start to see an uptick in reinfection in people or new infections in people who have been vaccinated, that’s our clue that we need to move quickly,” Frey said.

Dr. Grace Lee, who chairs the ACIP safety group and is a professor of pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine, also said she would like to see more evidence of breakthrough cases before recommending a booster shot.

“I would want greater certainty on the safety data if we’re talking about boosting before it’s clear what the risk data will look like,” Lee said. “If we’re seeing severe breakthrough cases then I think the decision-making moves forward even if there’s uncertainty with the safety data.”

Categories
Health

A Vaccine Aspect Impact Leaves Ladies Questioning: Why Isn’t the Capsule Safer?

A Vaccine Side Effect Leaves Women Wondering: Why Isn’t the Pill Safer?

Last month, as the Food and Drug Administration paused use of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine to evaluate the risk of blood clots in women under 50, many scientists noted that clots associated with birth control pills were much more common.

The comparison was intended to reassure women of the vaccine’s safety. Instead, it has stoked anger in some quarters — not about the pause, but about the fact that most contraceptives available to women are hundreds of times riskier, and yet safer alternatives are not in sight.

The clots linked to the vaccine were a dangerous type in the brain, while birth control pills increase the chances of a blood clot in the leg or lung — a point quickly noted by many experts. But the distinction made little difference to some women.

“Where was everyone’s concern for blood clots when we started putting 14-year-old girls on the pill,” one woman wrote on Twitter.

Another said, “If birth control was made for men it’d taste like bacon and be free.”

Some women heard, on social media and elsewhere, that they should not complain because they had chosen to take birth control knowing the risks involved. “That just made me double down,” said Mia Brett, an expert in legal history focused on race and sexuality. “This is such a common response to women’s health care — that we point out something and it’s dismissed.”

The torrent of fury online was familiar to experts in women’s health. “They should be angry — women’s health just does not get equal attention,” said Dr. Eve Feinberg, a reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist at Northwestern University. “There’s a huge sex bias in all of medicine.”

Dr. Feinberg and many of the women online acknowledge that contraceptives have given women control over their fertility, and the benefits far exceed the harms. Rebecca Fishbein, a 31-year-old culture writer, started tweeting about the inadequacy of birth control pills almost immediately after the announcement of the pause.

Still, “birth control is an incredible invention, thank God we have it,” she said last month in an interview. “I’ll fight anyone who tried to take it away.”

Contraceptives have also improved over the years, with intrauterine devices and oral options that offer an ultralow dose of estrogen. “Over all, it’s incredibly safe,” Dr. Feinberg said. “Everything that we do has risks.”

But Dr. Feinberg said it was crucial for health care providers to discuss the risks with their patients and coach them on worrisome symptoms — a conversation many women said they had never had.

Kelly Tyrrell, a communications professional in Madison, Wis., was 37 when doctors discovered potentially fatal blood clots in her lungs.

Ms. Tyrrell is an endurance athlete — wiry, strong and not prone to anxiety. In early 2019, she began waking up with a pain in her left calf. After one particularly bad morning, an urgent care visit revealed that she had high blood levels of “D dimer,” a protein fragment that indicates the presence of clots.

She had been taking birth control pills for 25 years, but none of the doctors made a connection. Instead, they said that given her age, fitness and the lack of other risk factors, her symptoms were unlikely to be from a blood clot. They sent her home with instructions to do stretches for her calf muscle.

When she felt a tightness in her chest while running in Hawaii after her grandmother’s funeral, doctors said the cause was probably stress and anxiety. In July 2019, she finished a 100K race in Colorado and assumed her aching lungs and purple lips were the result of running for 19 hours at a high altitude.

But she knew something was seriously wrong on the morning of Oct. 24, 2019, when she became short of breath after walking up a short flight of stairs.

This time, after ruling out heart problems, doctors scanned her lungs and discovered multiple clots. One had cut off blood flow to a portion of her right lung.

“I instantly burst into tears,” Ms. Tyrrell recalled. The doctors put her on a course of blood thinners — and told her never to touch estrogen again. Ms. Tyrrell switched to a copper IUD. Over time, she added, the incident had escalated into a sharp rage that was renewed by the Johnson & Johnson news.

“Part of my anger was that a medication that I took to control my fertility ended up threatening my mortality,” she said. “I’m angry that I hadn’t been counseled better about that risk, or even what to look for.”

Emily Farris, 36, was prescribed oral contraceptives at age 18 to help with migraines. In all of the conversations she has had with her many doctors over the years, “never once was blood clots brought up,” she said in an interview.

On Twitter, some critics pointed out that the inserts with birth control packs clearly describe the blood clot risk. “My response is a bit incredulous to that,” said Dr. Farris, a political scientist at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.

The inserts for most medications have a long list of possible side effects, placing “a high burden for folks to try to sort through medical research, to sort through what probability and statistics mean,” she said.

Even with a Ph.D.-level education, “I can’t assess those risks,” Dr. Farris added. “I think most Americans need someone to translate what the legalese kind of pamphlet is into real terms.”

For Ms. Tyrrell, that elucidation came much too late. Her lungs have not felt the same since her diagnosis, but she is not sure whether that is because of lingering damage from a previous blood clot, new clots that she should be worried about or simply her age, she said, adding, “It’s never not on my mind anymore.”

Categories
Business

Why Biden’s Plan to Elevate Taxes for Wealthy Traders Isn’t Hurting Shares

Why Biden’s Plan to Raise Taxes for Rich Investors Isn’t Hurting Stocks

“Most Democrats appear to be on board to reduce the differential between the capital gains tax rate and ordinary income, but there is resistance to treating the rates as the same,” wrote analysts at Beacon Policy Advisors, a policy advisory firm. “This means that there is likely to be a middle ground to increase the capital recovery rate for top earners to, say, 28 percent.”

Updated

May 5, 2021, 10:31 p.m. ET

If stocks continued to climb, it would be broadly in line with the previous periods when capital gains taxes were raised.

In 2013, when the tax on Americans with the highest incomes rose from 15 percent to its current 23.8 percent, the S&P 500 rose nearly 30 percent. It’s been the best year for stocks in two decades. And after the maximum rate had risen from 20 percent to 28 percent at the end of 1986, the market continued to grow by almost 40 percent through most of 1987.

Stocks finally suffered the worst one-day collapse ever on Black Monday in October 1987, but that crash had little to do with taxation and the markets ended the year a little higher. In 1991, a small increase in the capital gains rate for those with the highest incomes to 28.9 percent coincided with a 26 percent increase in the S&P 500. The main driver of this profit had nothing to do with taxes; It was the beginning of a recession.

Similarly, investors seem to be focused on evidence that the economy is on the verge of breakneck growth. That surge is fueled by a flow of federal government spending, rock-bottom interest rates, and more Covid-19 vaccinations. In the first three months of the year, the economy grew by 6.4 percent on an annual basis. At this rate, 2021 would be the best year of growth since 1984.

Economic growth and corporate profits tend to increase together. The earnings reports of listed companies are already showing signs of an additional upswing in the economy.

Tech giants like Tesla, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Google’s parent company Alphabet reported first-quarter earnings that exceeded analysts’ expectations.

Categories
Politics

Georgia’s Election Legislation, and Why Turnout Isn’t Simple to Flip Off

Georgia’s Election Law, and Why Turnout Isn’t Easy to Turn Off

A simple answer is that convenience isn’t as important as is often thought. Almost anyone who cares enough about voting will face the inconvenience of personal voting, whether because the inconvenience is not really that great or because they worry enough to suffer it.

This, of course, requires a degree of convenience: six-hour lines would change the calculation for many voters. Indeed, long lines affect voter turnout. A certain amount of interest is also assumed. Someone might think: there is no way I am waiting in line for half an hour to vote for the dog catcher. Similarly, as the importance of a race declines, the importance of a convenient set-up option is likely to grow.

The implication, however, is that if enough convenient options are available, almost anyone can vote, even if the most preferred option does not exist. That makes the Georgian electoral law’s efforts to stem long lines potentially quite significant. Not only could this mitigate the already limited effect of restricting email reconciliation, but even outweigh it.

Another reason is that convenience voting may not be as convenient for lower turnout voters who essentially decide the overall turnout. Low turnout voters are unlikely to think about how they will vote a month before the election if they have to request a postal vote. Someone to think about it is likely a high turnout voter. Low turnout voters may not know who they will be supporting until election day. And that makes them less likely to use pre-voting options like a no-excuse early vote, which requires them to think about the choice early and often: submit a motion, fill out a ballot, and send it back.

As a result, convenience voting methods tend to reinforce socio-economic biases in favor of voters with high turnout. The methods ensure that every highly interesting voter has many choices without doing quite so much to attract less engaged voters to the election.

A final reason is that electoral restrictions can backfire by annoying and energizing democratic voters. For example, this law’s restrictions on the distribution of water in a line can do more to mobilize democrats than keep them from voting. A recent study even theorized that the Supreme Court’s decision to withdraw elements of the electoral law did not reduce black voter turnout as subsequent efforts to restrict voting were quickly thwarted by efforts to mobilize black voters.

This does not mean that Georgian law or other so-called voter suppression laws have no consequences. Many make voting difficult enough to intimidate or discourage some voters. Many eligible voters are completely disenfranchised, even if only in small numbers. Perhaps the disenfranchisement of a single voter deserves outrage and opposition, especially when the law is passed for dubious or even contrived reasons and the mass disenfranchisement of Jim Crow serves as a historical backdrop.

Categories
Business

Israel’s large vaccine drive is not maintaining with new circumstances — particularly amongst youthful victims

Israel's massive vaccine drive isn't keeping up with new cases — especially among younger victims

For the first time since the pandemic began, Israel says more than a quarter of the most serious Covid-19 cases requiring hospitalization occur in patients under the age of 60.

The Israeli Ministry of Health blames a new strain first discovered in the UK last month.

Dr. Itamar Grotto, Deputy Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Health, said: “This is because the new British variant is more contagious, especially among young people and children.”

The news that Israel’s hospitals now have a record number of serious Covid cases came within 24 hours of Israel launching a “second dose”. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the first to get his second shot yesterday.

Israel has been commended by the global health community for moving to vaccination so quickly. So far, nearly two million Israelis have received their first shot from around 9 million people. Israel has a highly centralized health system in which everyone has to register in a digital system, which makes it easier for the Ministry of Health to organize the vaccination campaign across the country.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will receive the second dose of the vaccine against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on January 9, 2021 at the Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan near the coastal city of Tel Aviv.

MIRIAM ALSTER | AFP | Getty Images

Despite its success on the vaccine front, Israel is currently in its third nationwide lockdown due to the virus spreading. Without downplaying concerns about the rising percentage of younger people hospitalized with serious infections, epidemiologist Grotto points out that nearly 70% of Israelis over the age of 60 received their first shot, which gives them some immunity.

CNBC employee and former FDA chief Dr. Scott Gottlieb has been keeping an eye on trends in Israel and Europe since the pandemic started a year ago, and used them as a possible model for what could happen in the US, including the relatively newly discovered British variant.

“If we can use the vaccine, we can probably fight it off,” Gottlieb said, referring to the more dangerous, faster-spreading strain.

He believes the recent and alarming surge in cases in the United States is more related to vacation travel and gatherings, “but the bottom line is that we don’t have a good enough surveillance system to know for sure,” said Gottlieb.

The British variant officially only accounts for 0.2% of the US cases. Gottlieb also warned U.S. health officials that they are not yet looking so carefully for the increasingly dangerous burden ravaging an overstretched South African health system.