re: Your dollar is about to get even weaker as inflation skyrockets once again

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This is the first jump in Core PPI since April 2022.

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Core is a bit of a red herring at this point as food and energy are the big drivers of inflation. Consumers have to eat and need energy to attain goods and services. To give an anecdote on food... last weekend I went to the WalMart Neighborhood Market on Coursey. I picked up a large (40-45lb) bag of dog food, two twelve-packs of soft drinks, a big bag of Halloween candy and a dozen of the 8oz Community Coffee bottles. My bill: $111 and some change.

For another anecdote, the wife (nopics) went to the WalMart on O'Neal yesterday to get some fixings for chili. A 3-lb pack of ground beef (not chuck) was something like $20. As a bit of a footnote, turkey chili doesn't suck.

With their resurgence in price growth, trying to exclude them right now is to put lipstick on a pig.

With the previous two months being up in both CPI and PPI and job growth still beating expectations, September would almost have needed to have deflation in order for the Fed to not raise rates at the end of this month. For weeks now probabilities have pointed to another .25 increase at the end of the month so these PPI numbers (and very likely the CPI numbers tomorrow will show increases as well). If we don't see job numbers start crashing soon (and by that I mean no or negative growth, even if it's only a small shrink) then we may well see another (ie: second) hike before the end of the year (although it's too early to say that with any sort of certainty).

The next hike will cause more jobs to be shed, but if we have two hikes before January 1, I fear it eventually creates a snowball effect that blows through the firewall of open positions created by rampant consumer debt spending.