Well, that was quite a shock. We just got confirmation that inflation is starting to accelerate once again. That is really bad news, because the cost of living has already been stressing people out all over the country. In fact, one recent survey found that 86 percent of Americans are stressed out about grocery prices. But it isn’t just the cost of food that has been going up. We have been getting slammed by double-digit price increases in every direction, and that is having enormous consequences. Our standard of living is eroding with each passing month, and as a result the middle class is steadily shrinking.
On Thursday, we learned that the producer price index increased by 0.9 percent last month.
That was the largest increase that we have seen since June 2022…
The producer price index, which measures final demand goods and services prices, jumped 0.9% on the month, compared with the Dow Jones estimate for a 0.2% gain. It was the biggest monthly increase since June 2022.
Excluding food and energy prices, core PPI rose 0.9% against the forecast for 0.3%. Excluding food, energy and trade services, the index was up 0.6%, the biggest gain since March 2022.
Such a large change in one month was very unexpected.
When Rick Santelli of CNBC heard the news, he totally flipped out…
Headline number is– WHOPPINGLY big! Oh my goodness!
Up 9 tenths of a percent. Up 9 tenths. And if you strip out food and energy, guess what? It’s still up 9/10ths. Boy, that equals June of 22!
You’re at the March of 22 on the headline to find a bigger number. On the core number, that would come to March of 22 since we’ve had a number of that magnitude when it was 1.2%. These are kind of COVID distorted numbers.
So what would happen if the producer price index rises by 0.9 percent every month for the next 12 months?
That would put us at a 10.8 percent annual rate, and we would officially be in Jimmy Carter territory.
Another point that I would like to make is that the government numbers always understate the true rate of inflation by a significant margin.
And we can clearly see evidence of this all around us.
Right now, electricity prices are spiking from coast to coast. For example, New Jersey residents were just pummeled by price hikes of between 17 and 20 percent…
New Jersey residents are up in arms over huge spikes in their energy costs, leading to speculation it could prove fatal for Democrats.
The New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities (BPU) approved a 17-20 percent hike in June for the majority of households in The Garden State.
One local woman says that her electricity bill is now $200 more than it used to be…
“$200 more, I know my electrical bill,” one woman told Cotton in Rutherford, N.J., on Tuesday. “I was shocked. So to say the least, I’m very disappointed. This is killing us, and every time you turn around it’s something more. You only get little pleasures in life that you enjoy, and my air conditioner is one of them.”
New Jersey’s electric bills currently rank 12th highest in the nation, according to the Wall Street Journal, with prices sitting roughly 15 percent higher than the national average.
Air conditioning is rapidly becoming a luxury.
Not everyone will be able to afford it anymore.
Beef has also become a luxury item, and it is being reported that last month the price of beef soared to yet another new all-time high…
Beef prices surged to an all-time high in July as the market grappled with consistently strong demand and long-term issues in domestic production.
According to the latest consumer price index, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics published on Tuesday, the beef and veal index rose by 2.5 percent in July, compared to 0.2 percent for the broader food category. This capped an 11.3 percent increase over the past 12 months.
Meanwhile, the price of ground beef and uncooked beef steaks has risen by 11.5 and 12.4 percent, respectively, both now at record levels.
I am a meat and potatoes kind of guy, and so this really upsets me.
When I see the prices that supermarkets are trying to charge us now, it makes me feel sick.
The other day, a Twitter user known as “Molly Ploofkins” posted a truly alarming photo that she took at her local Publix…
45 dollars?
Seriously?
It is hard for me to believe the prices that we are seeing now.
But they are only going to go higher.
Speaking of going higher, millions of Americans are about to get slammed with much higher health insurance premiums…
A perfect storm of rising health care costs, expensive new drugs, and the scheduled end of enhanced federal subsidies could drive Obamacare’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplace premiums to their steepest levels in years—and hit more than 24 million Americans in their wallets.
According to a new analysis of insurers’ 2026 filings by Peterson-KFF’s Health System Tracker, the median proposed premium hike across 312 marketplace insurers is 18%. Most increases range from 12% to 27%, with more than 125 insurers seeking hikes of 20% or more—the sharpest climb since 2018. Final rates will be locked in by late summer 2025.
Health insurance premiums are already wildly out of control.
And now they want to hit us with double-digit increases again?
This is the reality of the economy that we live in now.
In this environment, even sending your kids to summer camp can put you deep into debt…
Two-thirds of parents who need summer child care say they struggle to afford it, and 62% of parents go into debt to cover summer child care, camps and activities, according to a recent survey of more than 600 parents conducted by LendingTree, an online lending marketplace. Parents in the survey said they spend almost $900 per child on summer care, and nearly half said they cut back on other expenses like dining out and entertainment to offset the cost.
Today, most of the country is living on the edge financially.
And now that economic conditions are slowing down, we are seeing foreclosures start to spike just like we did in 2008 and 2009.
For example, in Clark County, Nevada there was a 32 percent increase in foreclosure notices in just 12 months…
Growing numbers of Las Vegas homeowners are falling into foreclosure as soaring prices and Trump boycotts decimate the city, a new report found.
In Clark County, 200 default notices were filed in June, an increase of 32 percent from the same month last year, a research report from the University of Nevada’s Lied Center for Real Estate found.
Default notices are filed after a property owner falls behind on their mortgage payments and indicates the start of the foreclosure process.
This is why it is so important to have an emergency fund.
If you lose your job, you have got to have something to fall back on.
Sadly, mass layoffs are now happening all over the nation and the competition for any good jobs that are available has become fierce.
Some people that are unemployed have been applying for hundreds and hundreds of jobs without any success. I shared an example of this the other day, and here is another example…
Emanuel Barcenas feels like he’s falling behind. At 25, he’d like to be living in his own place, saving money for the future and making enough money to take a date out to dinner.
Instead, two years after he graduated with a computer science bachelor’s degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology, he’s unemployed and living with his parents in the suburbs of Chicago. Despite having applied to more than 900 jobs — from secretary positions to a role at a prison — he has gotten only a handful of interviews.
“I want to be an adult,” he said. “I need to lock in, I need to move forward, but right now, I’m just stunted. I’m trying my best, but I guess my best isn’t good enough.”
Sometimes I feel like we are all playing a very twisted game of musical chairs.
Every time the music stops, more seats are being removed and more people fall out of the middle class.
If you still have your seat in the middle class, hold on to it tightly, because even rougher times are ahead.
I warned for years and years about the damage that was being done to the middle class.
But we just kept going down the same path, and now look at what has happened.
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