US inflation falling fast as Europe prepares to go back into a deliberate austerity-led crises

The transitory view of the current inflation episode is getting more support from the evidence. Yesterday’s US inflation data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (March 14, 2023) – Consumer Price Index Summary – February 2023 – shows a further significant drop in the inflation rate as some of the key supply-side drivers abate. All the data is pointing to the fact that the US Federal Reserve’s logic is deeply flawed and not fit for purpose. Today, I also discuss the stupidity that is about to begin in Europe again, as the European Commission starts to flex its muscles after it announced to the Member States that it is back to austerity by the end of this year. And finally, some beauty from Europe in the music segment.

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US labour market slows a bit but no sign of a major contraction yet

Last Friday (March 10, 2023), the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released their latest labour market data – Employment Situation Summary – February 2023 – which revealed a slight dip in the number of net payroll jobs created and a slight increase in the unemployment rate. It is too early to say whether this marks a turning point in the US labour market after several months of interest rate increases. We will know more about that next month. January’s result was very strong, so a slight dip on that is no cause for concern. Most of the aggregates are steady and in terms of the pre-pandemic period, February’s net employment change was still relatively strong.
Real wages continued to decline in the face of a decelerating inflation rate. Overall, the US labour market is steady and doesn’t appear to be contracting fast in the face of the Federal Reserve interest rate hikes.

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Strong US labour market results – further evidence that mainstream monetary theory is flawed

Well, things are getting interesting in the US. The Federal Reserve started hiking interest rates in April 2022 and its decisions are underpinned by an theoretical framework that suggests the unemployment rate is above what it thinks is the natural rate (the rate where inflation is stable). So the rate hikes are meant to slow spending and increase the unemployment rate and cause price setters to stop accelerating prices up. Except the data isn’t obeying the theory and inflation is falling despite the rate hikes rather than because of them. This is another demonstration of how flawed the dominant mainstream economics has become. Last Friday (February 3, 2023), the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released their latest labour market data – Employment Situation Summary – January 2023 – which revealed on-going and very robust employment growth, rising participation and falling unemployment. These are good signs for American workers. Further, as inflation is now in decline, most sectors recorded both modest nominal wages growth is some real wages growth – another virtuous sign. The latest data is certainly not consistent with the Federal Reserve type narratives. The point is that the labour market is not behaving at all like the assumed model deployed by the Federal Reserve.

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Military spending binge is working to keep economies growing

Its been around 9 months since the central banks of the world (bar Japan) started to push up interest rates. And still there are no firms signs that a recession is impending. There are some signs of a growth slowdown but that is not uniform across the globe. The US seems to be continuing to grow. While that suggests that monetary policy is less effective than the mainstream economists claim – which is no surprise to non-mainstream economists who have long understood that fiscal policy is the tool of choice for counter-stabilisation, there are other offsetting factors that are at play here. Governments around the world have seriously ramped up their fiscal outlays over 2022 on military procurements as the perceived threat from Russia and China has been magnified by military generals and their mates in the big US weapons corporations, who have taken the opportunity to get make massive extra profits. The power of the military-industrial complex (MIC) is long-standing and well understood. It explains why all the usual disaster scenarios that accompany increasing fiscal outlays by governments haven’t attracted much criticism. Too many elites benefit from the military binge. But the fiscal expenditure also helps to counteract any spending contraction by households who are negatively impacted by interest rate increases.

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The pandemic has caused fundamental shifts in worker behaviour

Jeff Beck has died! A masterful musician. Very sad. We move on. I read an interesting research paper recently – “The Great Retirement Boom”: The Pandemic-Era Surge in Retirements and Implications for Future Labor Force Participation – published in the US Federal Reserve Bank’s Finance and Economics Discussion Series (released November 2022), which illustrates how the pandemic is altering the behaviour of the US labour market. The lessons from the US are relevant everywhere as governments progressively ignore the reality that a dangerous virus is still in our midst and still causing havoc (deaths, long-term disability and more). For those who are continuing to claim the pandemic is some sort of conspiracy to control us or that Covid is less dangerous than influenza or that mask wearing is redundant and all the rest of the nonsense that seems to perpetrated by some on the Left who think they are for ‘freedom’ and those on the Right who just care about profits, this sort of research should presents a serious wake up call.

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US labour market continues to grow as more working age people find jobs

Well, happy 2023 to all my readers. We are back for another year – the 19th in this blog’s existence. All the observers have been waiting for a sign that the US interest rate hikes are slowing the US economy down, which is the mainstream logic that has been used to justify the regressive policy shift. The data, so far, suggests that the inflationary pressures are subsiding as a consequence of the factors other than the interest rate changes which seem to have done little other than redistribute income to the rich away from the poor. The latest labour market data release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics supports that view. Last Friday (January 6, 2022), the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released their latest labour market data – Employment Situation Summary – December 2022 – which revealed on-going employment growth, rising participation and falling unemployment. These are good signs for American workers. Further, as inflation is subsiding the modest nominal wages growth is now providing real wages growth – another virtuous sign. The latest data is certainly not consistent with the Federal Reserve type narratives. But who should be surprised by that.

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US inflation has peaked and monetary policy had nothing much to do with it

It’s Wednesday, and I have two things to write about briefly before exposing readers to some more music. First, the evidential base for my ‘this inflationary period is transitory’ narrative gains more weight. The latest CPI data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that inflation has peaked in the US and falling rapidly in the goods sector, which started this episode off. The second topic relates to measuring progress in the development and spread of new ideas. It is often difficult to know how far a new framework has penetrated the broader debate. But sometimes things happen that remind me of how far we have to go in changing the framing and language surrounding fiscal capacity and the related topics, that Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has brought to the fore. We finish with some calming guitar playing.

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US labour market is a sort of holding pattern – declining but slowly

Last Friday (December 2, 2022), the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released their latest labour market data – Employment Situation Summary – November 2022 – which suggested that the US labour market showed signs of slowing further, with payroll employment growing by just 263,000 net jobs. The labour force measure showed employment and labour force growth turning negative as the participation edged down. The result was that the official unemployment rate remained largely unchanged – with both the demand and supply side falling in proportion. The quit rate is stable which suggests that the US labour market is in a sort of holding pattern – slowing weakening but not consistent with the Federal Reserve type narratives. There are also no fundamental wage pressures emerging at present to drive any further inflation spikes. Wages growth appears to be reactive to inflation rather than propelling it. Wages growth appears to be reactive to inflation rather than propelling it. The claim that wage pressures are now pushing inflation is untenable given the data.

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US labour market – shows further signs of slowing

Last Friday (November 4, 2022), the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released their latest labour market data – Employment Situation Summary – November 2022 – which suggested that the US labour market showed signs of slowing further, with payroll employment growing by just 261,000 net jobs. The labour force measure showed employment and labour force growth turning negative as the participation edged down. The result was that the official unemployment rate rose by 0.1 points to 3.7 per cent. There are also no fundamental wage pressures emerging at present to drive any further inflation spikes. Wages growth appears to be reactive to inflation rather than propelling it. Wages growth appears to be reactive to inflation rather than propelling it. The claim that wage pressures are now pushing inflation is untenable given the data.

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US labour market – weaker but employment growth remains positive

Last Friday (October 7, 2022), the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released their latest labour market data – Employment Situation Summary – September 2022 – which reported a total payroll employment rise of only 263,000 jobs (further slowdown) and a drop (0.2 points) in the official unemployment rate to 3.5 per cent. Total labour force survey employment rose by just 204 thousand net (0.13 per cent), while the labour force declined by 57 thousand net (0.03 per cent) as a result of the decline in the participation rate of 0.1 points to 62.3 per cent. 4. As a result (in accounting terms), total measured unemployment fell by 261 thousand to 5,753 thousand which is why the unemployment rate fell by 0.2 points. However, while the unemployment rate fell, the combination of weakening employment growth and falling participation is a sign of a faltering labour market. There are also no fundamental wage pressures emerging at present to drive any further inflation spikes. Wages growth appears to be reactive to inflation rather than propelling it. The claim that wage pressures are now pushing inflation is untenable given the data.

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