Topic: April 10 CPI Print came in hot (Read 269 times)

Ser, you are talking entirely about something else. I'm merely talking about Jerome Powell, CPI, and interest rates.


But how high inflation currently is today isn't the point. The point is it's sticky, and because of that, the Federal Reserve can't cut the rates and pivot to QE if they actually need to. Jerome Powell's choices are,

- Hike more, risk a recession and kill inflation.

- Do nothing, and wait for inflation to cause the recession for him. Sooner or later something will break.

Assuming those prerequisites you ticked off are in fact necessary (and I'm not really doubting you), then yeah....the US has painted itself into an economic corner and may use the only tool it thinks it has at its disposal, interest rate adjustments. 

But while the latest number was higher than it has been for months, it still isn't anywhere near as high as it was from May 2021 until the end of 2022.  Bleak as things may appear, I take some solace in that fact (even though I still think we're all fucked in the long term because of the constant money printing).  It's no wonder precious metal prices have been skyrocketing as of late, and I'm surprised that hasn't been discussed more on bitcointalk.  Gold has soared past its ATH if I'm not mistaken, but I would have expected a ton of "BTC vs. gold" or other related threads dealing with gold. 

Ah well.  Stock up on seeds, water, and build that bunker if you haven't already.  If not for yourself, then for your kids.

If we remove the "normalizing the US regime" option, there isn't much left other than increasing the interest rates instead to try and battle inflation.

In any case, things in the world are getting too unstable to predict anything anymore. On top of all that, China is acting like more of a weasel these days which makes things even more complicated and less predictable. Keep in mind that US regime sees China as its biggest threat and has majority of its resources focused on "battling" China.

Real change? I believe not under the current system.

Going back to the topic, what can Jerome Powell do to truly curb inflation and put it under control? It might be higher for longer for the rest of the year/cancel the three rate cuts in their schedule. They perhaps should also tighten more. There's a risk that a recession might happen, but if Powell doesn't do it, inflation itself might cause the recession. How many "soft landings" have there been in U.S. history?

Exactly. As he said and I'm paraphrasing "Inflation is the result of rapid increase in the quantity of money". The way they're printing money now is just unbelievable. A trillion dollar every 100 days, that's crazy.

As for the change, nothing short of a regime change in USA would suffice. But I already gave the "trail" of why they are printing money and where it is going. It is not that hard to find this chain/trail and at least try to do something at the source.
For example the illegal US presence in Syria (illegal even according to US constitution since the gov. doesn't have congressional permission for it) is part of that adventure started by the war criminal Bush that has cost American taxpayers over $12 trillion and counting.

It shouldn't be that hard to put a leash on the government. Last I checked Americans were still under the impression that they have democracy.

It's the same in Europe, although again it depends on each country individually - but food has become more expensive and, at least in my case, it's still rising slightly. Considering that I like to keep receipts from stores, I compared my shopping cart in such a way that I took old receipts from stores and went to buy the same products as before, and I found that I paid from 30% to even 55% more compared to the time before inflation started to run rampant.

However, I have to admit that the transition to EUR has a big part in all of this, considering that we changed our national currency a little more than 1 year ago - which resulted in incredible robbery by traders who raised prices hiding them behind the new currency.

I'm not entirely sure if you agree with Milton Friedman, but Inflation has ALWAYS been a monetary phenomenon, https://www.youtube.com/shorts/78dY6WeHJ44

Inflation in the United States is not the fault of anyone else, but only the fault of the Federal Reserve and the people in charge of the government. Why? Because no one else has a money printer except the Federal Reserve, and no one else can control government spending except the Cabal.

Its definitely not simple because of politics, the genie is out the bottle at this point.    Inducing a recession or actual proper tightening, reduction in debt and reversal of QE.   All things that have to happen, we should be doing it ourselves and because we refuse to do it by our own hand the market itself will find a way to level the ground one way or another.
 
The  Federal reserve is compromised in its position, the dual mandate is just a bad idea as its conflicted.    Its a given that the FED has no desire to cause harm to an economy and provoke job losses but now it has to avoid that no matter what its not fully able to avoid damage to the Dollar, in turn instability occurs.


Volcker moves are not possible, those interest rates would exceed and consume the entire budget with costs to service such a large debt.  Debt was lower in the 80s.

That's the same thing with more exaggeration and catastrophe. This is the problem, they only know one thing: to increase the interest rate. Sometimes a little, sometimes more. They should find another way.
For example one way is to start reducing the expenses so that the government isn't left with such a massive deficit to then print trillions of dollars to cover it but also cause inflation and then be forced to increase interest rates to lower it! It's a chain:

US regime's "adventures" overseas > higher expenses > bigger budget deficit > trillions printed to cover it > high inflation > high interest rates > recession > catastrophe

Fix the problem at the root and the chain reaction fixes everything... simple.

But they DO know what to do. Do what Paul Volcker did during the late 1970s, to increase interest rates more aggressively and actually cause a recession to kill demand, then restart the economy. There's currently no other way out of the situation. It's either the Federal Reserve cause the recession or inflation will do it for them. But Jerome Powell is indeed a coward, he won't do it. Or he's merely very naive that he believes a "soft landing" is very possible.

The strategy of increasing interest rates to lower the inflation has a lot of prerequirements.
Stuff such as energy prices (that affect price of literally everything) coming back down
Such as government budget deficit to go a lot lower than this
Such as the trade deficit not setting a new ATH every day
Such as printing money to stop or at least slow down and a lot more....

While none of these things are happening (like printing a trillion dollar every 100 days), of course the inflation is not going to come down!
The problem is, they have no idea what else to do! Playing with interest rates is the only thing they can come up with LOL but it has an ugly consequence called recession.

Here is the worse part, tensions around the globe are rising and everything economy related is going to get worse. We've seen how oil went back up recently and how everyone around the globe is panic buying gold... these are signs...

Plus it also gets more complicated. Before Bitcoin's value dropped, Gold was also going up with the DXY indicating that there's fear in the market, and investors are looking for reliable assets to hold value for the medium-term. Mere hours later, news came from the Middle East saying that Hezbollah was attacking Northern Israel, a probable proxy war by Iran against Israel.

OP, I've been keeping my eye on the inflation rate in the US lately, which I've never done in my life.  The one good thing about inflation not dropping anywhere near the 2% mark, which is where the Fed apparently is aiming for, is that interest rates are staying higher than they've been in a long time--that makes saving money in interest-bearing products like CDs and money market funds very attractive, and right now I'm trying to do just that. 

3.5% inflation for March still isn't anywhere near what we saw for most of 2021-present.  There's a decent website that I have bookmarked that has all sorts of inflation data, and if you take a look at it you can see that it's been increasing since January--but what I found interesting are the types of goods & services that are going up in price the most.  Car insurance, rent, and restaurant food were killers according to an article on Yahoo Finance.  Since I am a simple hermit, I have not been hammered as hard by inflation as some people but I've definitely seen the price of food rise to astronomical levels.

Anyway, I'd like to say I'm optimistic but if I'm being honest I think we're all fucked.  Or maybe our kids or grandkids will be; at the very least, they're the ones who're going to have to clean up all of this economic mess.  Good luck, children of the future!

A lot of people were waiting there yesterday for the insight that could happen, and what happened that the analysts expected was only 3.4%, but what they saw was above expectation because it was 3.5% year on year.

And after these events, the market reacted immediately, and the US dollar index rallied, which in turn caused Bitcoin's price value to drop, but it also recovered immediately. And because there are more and more newbies in the market, there are many people who don't know about CPI. So always, in these kinds of events, institutional investors rebalance their portfolios and depend on market sentiments. `

What I don't understand is why people think that there will be any rate cuts this year. It must be wishful thinking or maybe they are expecting some political maneuvering.

Inflation is not going down in the U.S. If anything, it is starting to rise again. If the Fed is truly acting according to the data, then I think a lot of people will be shocked when the Fed raises rates this year.

If the Fed wants any landing, soft or hard, they are going to have to cut the power.



It doesn't seem unusual that monetary policy would differ. U.S. and ECB inflation are not the same (though perhaps they are loosely coupled) because they are the products of different currencies, economies, and central banks.

The Federal reserve and ECB had already parted ways in terms of monetary policy.  Europe will lower interest rates while the Dollar will not, the data coming to confirm the Fed as  correct to hold its ground just helps cement that situation further.    

I presume the effects will be to bring more strength to the Dollar index as the interest rates will help favor that trade over any equal move between the two central banks.  This may not help BTC as Dollar index or DXY higher generally means harder going vs FIAT or primarily Dollar which is the largest FIAT trade for BTC.

  This might out weigh halvening for importance and other factors, bringing back some bearish elements till we can equalize.  My own speculation was a possible sideways or slight sell over the summer and we resolve more constructively in the Autumn end of this year and beyond.

I expect it too, but it will be for the wrong reasons. It's going to be one very large rate cut, with a very fast pivot to Quantitative Easing + BRRR-Money-Prining. Something is going to break, and it might cause a contagion - causing the unemployment rate to surge. "Higher for longer" will break something "sooner or later".

Given the influence that US have on different countries, I'm sure that you'll feel it one way or another, of that I'm sure. They've got almost all of the global brands right? Which means that most of the country's policy would affect those companies and in extension, also the satellite braches on the countries that have those companies work too. It's a big deal because that means that your typical $100 worth of grocery has gone up to $103.5 and if that's only in a month which most of the time, how they measure the inflation rate, that would be around 42% in annual so basically your typical payment for a $100 grocery is now worth $142 unlike if it's kept around 2% which would be around 24% and not to mention that it's a big deal because there's no annual increase in the wages of workers which leads to less food for the table because they can't afford the other things since it's gone up in prices, I'm not sure that my math is right though but if it is then you can understand why it worries some folks.

Or it could be because the retail investors and the whales don't see this time as the right one to sell their bitcoins as investors are the ones that are dictating the pace of the market.

At this point I could care less what the Fed does. For starters the CPI is a manipulated index. Also, no matter how much interest rates have been raised, liquidity has not been reduced if at all, as interest rates are not the only way to manage liquidity in the markets. And finally, what is happening is that governments around the world have an insatiable voracity to spend and spend, so central banks have no choice but to print.

What can we do against this? Buy assets, mainly Bitcoin. And forget about the noise.

I don't live in the US, and I don't feel the impact of the US monetary policies. As someone from a developing low-income country, I find it hard to understand how a 3.5% increase in the consumer price index is a big deal, and how inflation below 5% can be considered bad because it doesn't meet the target 2%. These are such small numbers to me, and yet people in some other countries pay a lot of attention to them.
In any case, Bitcoin is holding on really well, 5% up over the last week, without the Fed decreasing their rates. That's perhaps another proof that Bitcoin has a life of its own, independent of the stock market, fiat policies and other important things of the global economy.

Just learn how to avoid consequences.
Show once a week, once a fortnight saves substantially vs every day shopping.
Think ahead, act instead of reacting.

Maybe we have to live with higher for longer but it’s not much to worry about in my opinion. I still expect to see rste cuts this year, maybe we wait until June but there should still be one or two cuts. I hope to see multiple cuts in 2025 which should coincide nicely with the next crypto bull run.

The next Federal Open Market Commitee, or populary known as the FOMC, meeting is going to be on April 30 to May 1. The negative reaction of the market yesterday is merely a trading opportunity used by traders because CPI came in hot again. What everyone should be waiting for is Jerome Powell's speech on April 30/May 1.

I believe he will make the same projection, saying rates are going to stay where they are + three probable rate cuts this year. But we already know there will absolutely be no rate cuts if inflation remains STICKY, and the CPI print yesterday has indicated that it is indeed STICKY.