Inflation Is At Highest Rate In 17 Years

AP:

Higher costs for energy and food last year pushed inflation up by the largest amount in 17 years, even though prices generally remained tame outside of those two areas. Meanwhile, industrial output was flat in December, more evidence of a significant slowdown in the economy.

Consumer prices rose by 4.1 percent for all of 2007, up sharply from a 2.5 percent increase in 2006, the Labor Department said Wednesday. Consumers felt the pain when they filled up their gas tanks or shopped for groceries. Prices for both energy and food shot up by the largest amount since 1990.

Read the whole story: AP

Comments

[bayviking]

01:43 PM on 01/17/2008

The last to admit and inform the public is the Federal Government, that has been removing gasoline and food costs from the reported inflation index for years.

Albert Einstein summed it all up succinctly 60 years ago in an article titled "Why Socialism?":

"Nowhere have we really overcome .... "the predatory phase" of human development....The economic anarchy of capitalist society....is the real source of the evil.

Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, (creating) an oligarchy with enormous power (that) cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society....The real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development."

[Dunnage]

12:55 PM on 01/17/2008

Anything for a headline.

What about Core Inflation?

Yes, everybody buys gas and that's the problem -- it's worse than a tax because the money goes outside the american economy while taking the $ straight out of the working persons pocket leaving them unable to spend therefore preventing inflation in prices which by the by is the only inflation called inflation.

[musselmanm]

11:57 AM on 01/17/2008

Why is everyone down on San Diego Dude? Have any of you been there? It is one of the richest areaa in the US. In San Diego, labor comes from Mexico, most likely Tiajuana, land of the drug wars.
Just like multiple choice Mitt, most of the population of San Diego has no concept of poverty unless they go South to TJ or North to Santa Ana.

[StephenBarry]

11:55 AM on 01/17/2008

Bend over America and take it like a man.

[wsblake]

09:55 AM on 01/17/2008

Just wait. This is nothing. With interest rates kept low due to Repbulican election worries over recession, and the world flooded with seas of Iraq War dollars, inflation is going to skyrocket even more. But the news is even worse. It's actually massive stagflation which will be occuring- that's inflation plus recession.

[lehrbob007]

06:16 AM on 01/17/2008

Well, I'm no economist.......just a leftist blue-collar workin' stiff and I think the Consumer Price index is currently fuct. All I know is I'm being nickeled and dimed to death! EVERYBODY'S stickin their hand in my pockets and I ain't gettin' no jollies from it! I think this weighting system is fuct up! I'm losin' more than 1% a year - that's a fact! I'm gonna go underground income if I can pull it off!

"Live Simply So Others May Simply Live!"

[VivaZapata]

02:14 AM on 01/17/2008

Thank god we have a government that wastes money on tables, charts and graphs to tell us what we already know. Inflation is yet another tool to erode the middle class in America. I'm not saying it is deliberate, but the fact is a greater number of people are on fixed income; they're older and wiser and if the choice is a big screen TV or eating better, most will choose the latter. It's addition by subtraction. We are witnessing corporate greed's ugly unraveling.

[beekeeper]

01:24 AM on 01/17/2008

Ah the ENRON affect or effect or both. Over inflated values of everything to include oil and land ... and energy prices. This brought to you by the greedy buddies of BUSH and Co. America you get what you voted for. Are you happy?

[insanityfollows]

12:27 AM on 01/17/2008

The wpi and inflation rate are bad news, but anyone who buys groceries has seen some items spiking for 18 months or more. Cereal, milk, chicken have all gone sky high, with some of those prices (at least where I live) having gone up 25% or more. Vegetables too. Even fabric softener! I can't afford to eat and wash my clothes. Well, we'll all be skinny, but we won't smell too good. Thanks George and King whatever-your-name-is. I hope the Saudis and others consider the fact that if we run out of cash they won't have any money coming in eventually. Economics 101. Doesn't matter. Money now, problems later. Problems are easier to deal with once you have the cash.

[loki]

10:53 PM on 01/16/2008

YEAH BUSH !! The First MBA President!! A true product of the Bush family tree. His father had the US in a war and in economic turmoil when he left the office of the President as well.
Like father , like son..

[mrcontinental]

09:54 PM on 01/16/2008

Excellent piece by William Engdahl; perhaps his best yet:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7813

[NoahVail]

09:01 PM on 01/16/2008

Don't worry. Nixon took us off the gold standard, but Bush & Cheney will put us back on the oil standard! Not to be confused with Standard Oil, that trust of old, this is a whole new way of thinking about money: http://blip.tv/file/520347

[realitytrumpsbull]

08:56 PM on 01/16/2008

Woohoo! Dollarpeso, here we come! Then it'll be cheap AMERICAN labor that everyone ELSE bitches about! LOLOL Mexico will be trying to keep cheap US products out! Hehehehehehe

[pompous]

07:59 PM on 01/16/2008

Sweetie conservative - You received government assistance like it or not. The fact that you were able to take out education and home loans is courtesy of the government. The boot strap analogy is nonlogical - no one pulls themselves up by their bootstraps physically or figuratively. I to am a graduate courtesy of college loans and have owned a home for many years but I do not delude myself into thinking that I got here all alone. First, the 401k works best when one contributes the maximum allowed contribution. Second, by decreasing a contribution it increases the likelihood that a 401k will keep up with the rate of inflation - time value of money. Finally, no one is whining we just live in the real world of $4 milk and gas. Kudos on paying your loans.

[Justinpassing]

07:51 PM on 01/16/2008

S&P Will Review Bond Insurers With New Assumptions (Update2)

By Christine Richard

Jan. 16 (Bloomberg)
The above is important news; it has been remarkable how insufferably long it has taken these complicit bond rating agencies to do their job and down grade these fraudulent monolines. Anyone who was even casually observing the sub-prime melt down could see the flagrant obfuscation by Moody's, and S&P'S, and Fitches. Now to see the Supreme Court taking up the roll of aiding and abetting, by denying legal redress for these monumental frauds, should make it obvious that the USA is in final decay.