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Producer price index September 2024:

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Wholesale prices flat in September, below expectations

A measure of wholesale prices showed no change in September, pointing to a continued easing in inflation, the Labor Department reported Friday.

The producer price index, which measures what producers get for their goods and services, was flat for the month and up 1.8% from a year ago. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for a monthly gain of 0.1% after August’s increase of 0.2%.

Excluding food and energy, the PPI rose 0.2%, meeting expectations.

The report comes a day after the Labor Department reported that the consumer price index, a more widely followed inflation measure that shows what consumers actually pay for goods and services, had an increase of 0.2% for the month and 2.4% from a year ago.

Markets showed little reaction to the data, with stock market futures pointing slightly higher on Wall Street while Treasury yields rose on longer-duration securities.

Together, the releases indicate that inflation is off its blistering pace that peaked more than two years ago but still mostly holds above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.

Within the PPI, a 0.2% decline in final demand goods prices offset a 0.2% increase in services. Excluding trade services from core PPI, the index increased 0.1%.

A 3% jump in deposit services costs pushed the services index higher, while professional and commercial equipment wholesaling prices tumbled 6.3%.

On the goods side, a 2.7% slide in final demand in energy was the main factor in the decrease. Similarly, the index for gasoline fell 5.6%, holding back gains on the goods index. Diesel fuel prices plunged 17.6%.

Fed officials in recent days have expressed confidence that inflation is heading back to target even though some aspects, such as shelter, food and vehicle costs, have held stubbornly higher. Minutes from the September central bank meeting indicated policymakers were divided over the decision to slash the Fed’s benchmark interest rate by half a percentage point.

Most officials say they expect to continue to cut as long as the data indicates. Markets anticipate the Fed to lower by a quarter percentage point at each of its two remaining meetings this year.

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Economics

Elon Musk’s failure in government

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WHEN DONALD TRUMP announced last November that Elon Musk would be heading a government-efficiency initiative, many of his fellow magnates were delighted. The idea, wrote Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia Capital, a venture-capital firm, was “one of the greatest things I’ve ever read.” Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge-fund manager, wrote his own three-step guide to how DOGE, as it became known, could influence government policy. Even Bernie Sanders, a left-wing senator, tweeted hedged support, saying that Mr Musk was “right”, pointing to waste and fraud in the defence budget.

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Economics

The fantastical world of Republican economic thinking

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The elites of the American right cannot reconcile the inconsistencies in their policy platform

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Economics

People cooking at home at highest level since Covid, Campbell’s says

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A worker arranges cans of Campbell’s soup on a supermarket shelf in San Rafael, California.

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Campbell’s has seen customers prepare their own meals at the highest rate in about half a decade, offering the latest sign of everyday people tightening their wallets amid economic concerns.

“Consumers are cooking at home at the highest levels since early 2020,” Campbell’s CEO Mick Beekhuizen said Monday, adding that consumption has increased among all income brackets in the meals and beverages category.

Beekhuizen drew parallels between today and the time when Americans were facing the early stages of what would become a global pandemic. It was a period of broad economic uncertainty as the Covid virus affected every aspect of everyday life and caused massive shakeups in spending and employments trends.

The trends seen by the Pepperidge Farm and V-8 maker comes as Wall Street and economists wonder what’s next for the U.S. economy after President Donald Trump‘s tariff policy raised recession fears and battered consumer sentiment.

More meals at home could mean people are eating out less, showing Americans tightening their belts. That can spell bad news for gross domestic product, two thirds of which relies on consumer spending. A recession is commonly defined as two straight quarters of the GDP shrinking.

It can also underscore the souring outlook of everyday Americans on the national economy. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index last month fell to one of its lowest levels on record.

Campbell’s remarks came after the soup maker beat Wall Street expectations in its fiscal third quarter. The Goldfish and Rao’s parent earned 73 cents per share, excluding one-time items, on $2.48 billion in revenue, while analysts polled by FactSet anticipated 65 cents and $2.43 billion, respectively.

Shares added 0.8% before the bell on Monday. The stock has tumbled more than 18% in 2025.

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