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PPI January 2025:

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Customers shop for produce at an H-E-B grocery store on Feb. 12, 2025 in Austin, Texas.

Brandon Bell | Getty Images

A gauge of wholesale prices rose in January, indicating that pipeline inflation pressures are persisting and likely keeping the Federal Reserve on the sidelines regarding interest rate cuts.

The producer price index, which measures what producers get for their goods and services, increased by a seasonally adjusted 0.4% on the month, compared to the Dow Jones estimate for 0.3%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday.

Excluding food and energy, core PPI was up 0.3%, in line with the forecast.

The release comes the day after the BLS reported that the consumer price index rose 0.5% on the month, putting the annual inflation rate at 3% and well out of reach of the Fed’s 2% long-run goal.

Together, the releases likely will push back expectations for a rate cut until the second half of the year, though inflation data can be volatile and the outlook could change depending on what subsequent months show.

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Economics

American cities are criminalising homelessness. Will that help?

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DAVINA VALENZUELA watches as sanitation workers heave most of her belongings into a garbage truck. The 33-year-old has been homeless for more than a year, and was sleeping in a dusty alley in central Fresno, the biggest city in California’s Central Valley. The truck devours bags of clothes, a stroller, a pile of hypodermic needles and around $120—much of it in change. Police officers arrest her and a friend and sit them in the back of a truck. They are given tickets for camping in a public place, which became a misdemeanour crime in September in an attempt to shrink the city’s homeless encampments. “That’s all I have right there,” she says, once her handcuffs are taken off. “I don’t know how I ended up here.”

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Economics

Pete Hegseth is purging both weapons and generals

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THE PENTAGON has been mired in chaos in recent months. Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defence, stands accused of mishandling classified information. Many of his aides have been let go over alleged leaks (accusations they deny). Top generals have been fired for no discernible reason beyond their colour or sex. The department is in “a full-blown meltdown”, says John Ullyot, a Hegseth loyalist who served as chief spokesman until April. Yet Mr Hegseth is pressing ahead with sweeping reforms that will change the size, shape and purpose of America’s armed forces.

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Economics

Where the Trump administration has science on its side  

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BACK IN JANUARY Donald Trump signed executive order 14187, entitled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation”. He instructed federally run insurance programmes to exclude coverage of treatment related to gender transition for minors. The order aimed to stop institutions that receive federal grants from providing such treatments as well. Mr Trump also commissioned the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to publish, within 90 days, a review of literature on best practices regarding “identity-based confusion” among children. The ban on federal funding was later blocked by a judge, but the review was published on May 1st.

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