My expectation is that the gap between headline and core PPI will continue to grow as the weak dollar will continue to cause commodities (input) prices to rise, whiel the muddle through economy will weigh on the ability to pass-through these price increases.U.S. wholesale prices jumped 0.4% in September, mainly because of higher meat and natural gas costs, the government reported Thursday.
Core producer prices, which exclude the volatile food and energy categories, rose 0.1%. The core number tends to draw the most attention of economists.
After the report on wholesale prices as well as rising weekly jobless claims and a growing trade deficit, both bonds and stocks fell. See story on jobless claims.
The Fed is unlikely to let the report stand in the way of another round of bond purchases, economists said.
“Over the last ten months, core prices have increased 0.1% seven times, hardly sufficient to warrant concerns about inflation,” said Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak.
Source: BLS
2008 redux, other assets not yielding enough, so "investors" pile into commodities until demand craters...
ReplyDeleteyup
ReplyDeleteRead this recently. Commodities aren't behaving like they have in the past since "investors" have piled into a space traditionally traded by hedgers.
ReplyDeletea post on that such topic (i.e. investors impacting the price of goods through the futures market) here:
ReplyDeletehttp://tinyurl.com/ksfzw4
apologize in advance for the raw nature of the post (from when nobody read this blog).
I can't remember where, but I saw a comment on a similar post where a commenter facetiously suggested futures in diapers, toys, etc... Just wondering how hard it would be and how much we have to suffer before any legislation is done to tackle the speculation.
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