Prices increased above the 3.2% that the market expected, according to the 12-month measurement carried out in December and released this Thursday by the Department of Labor.
In November, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) had registered an increase of 3.1% year-on-year.
From November to December, meanwhile, the CPI increased 0.3%.
Core inflation, which excludes the most volatile energy and food prices, fell to 3.9% in the 12 months to December. Another figure that is separated from reality.
With similar prices in markets, gas stations, stores, restaurants, leisure centers and services, inflation in 2022 exceeded 7%. The question is: How is such a drastic decrease in inflation possible with such commercial values?
In part, the answer comes by itself when 2023 was the door to the electoral year and 2024 will be decisive for presidential elections in which the judicially and politically harassed and harassed Donald Trump, as the Republicans and the former president himself denounce, marches to the front of all polls: both for the primaries and to defeat Biden in November.
Housing, insurance and food with very high prices
Housing prices “continued to increase in December, contributing to half of the monthly increase,” the Department of Labor said in its statement.
Other items, such as furniture and services to individuals, fell, according to Biden government figures.
Joe Biden declared in a note that “there is still a lot to do to lower prices for American families and workers,” but there is not much left, there is a lot left, especially when it was his own administration that caused the historic inflation with his initial war against the American oil companies and then the apathy of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department in the face of the visible escalation of prices month after month since March 2021.
It was not until March of the following year that the president of the Central Bank or Fed and its Monetary Policy Committee decided to act and leave the criticism to Republican legislators and conservative economists who warned of the passivity of federal institutions in the face of the continued rise in prices.
“Extremist Republicans do not have any project to lower the cost of living,” the Democratic president also stated, who knows that price increases and his age (81 years) are the main limitations of his campaign for a second term that he will seek in this year’s elections.
Biden, who promised unity and peace in the country, has sown more divisions and created more internal and external crises than any other president in the nation’s history.
The Republican primaries start on Monday
The Republican Party begins its primaries on Monday to designate its candidate for the November presidential election, with former President Donald Trump (2017-2021) as the great favorite.
Republicans severely accuse Biden of having fueled the rise in prices, by adopting measures to increase public spending and massive investments in the framework of the COVID 19 crisis along with his regulations on the fossil fuel industry, another of the great failures of the current administration in its failed climate change policies.
Now the US produces much more oil than when the new Democrats criticized Trump on the energy issue.
The average crude oil production under Trump was 12.2 million barrels per day, now with Biden the US processes an average of 13.3 million barrels of crude oil daily, some days production has far exceeded that figure.
“Two steps forward, one step back in this battle against inflation. And December is, evidently, a step back,” summarized Robert Frick, economist at Navy Federal Credit Union.
“Beyond the monthly variations, the data show, as a whole, continuous but slow progress in controlling inflation towards the 2% objective” of the Federal Reserve (Fed, central bank), said Rubeela Farooqi, economist at the consulting firm High Frequency Economics.
The price increase reached 9.1% in the 12 months to June 2022, a level unprecedented since 1981.
A “soft landing” – as this scenario of inflationary moderation without recession is known – is viable, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen emphasized on Tuesday during a trip to Vienna, Virginia.
But now The Treasury Secretary was alarmingly wrong. in 2021 when he publicly stated for months that the US NO would suffer real and widespread high inflation, if not mild and temporary.
Yellen and Powell starred one of the biggest fiascos of senior government officials in Washington, which in another sensible and responsible government would have cost them instant resignation. But both are still there and apparently remain distant from the reality that Americans suffer every day, where more than 63% barely make ends meet with their income.
All of the above without entering into the chaotic national security crisis on the country’s southern border created by the White House and at an approximate direct and indirect cost of 200 billion dollars for American taxpayers. Nor the recent leadership scandal in Washington with the lack of communication between a US President and the head of the Pentagon, who was absent from his position and even in intensive care without the knowledge of the head of the White House. This is how things “work” now in this great nation.
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Source: With information from AFP, AP and other sources.
