The report card is in on the economy during last full month of the Biden administration, and how prices are affecting the American people, with the release of the Labor Department’s December report on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Wednesday. And the current White House didn’t exactly get a good grade.
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via the NYT:
Consumer prices rose more quickly in December, the latest sign that the Federal Reserve’s fight against inflation may have stalled.
The Consumer Price Index rose 0.4 percent from November, and was up 2.9 percent from a year earlier, the Labor Department said on Wednesday. It was the fastest one-month increase in overall prices since February, driven in part by another sharp rise in the price of eggs and other groceries.
Readers might be curious if a sometimes-cited alternate yardstick–the “core” CPI, which doesn’t include food or gas prices–provides a rosier outlook on the nation’s economy. The Times brought that up, calling it “encouraging” that the number “rose 3.2 percent from” December 2023. The index was stuck at 3.3 percent for August, September, and October.
Here’s more on those jumps in both food and fuel:
Prices continued to rise in some of the categories that matter most to consumers. Grocery prices, which were relatively flat in late 2023 and early 2024, are rising again, led by the price of eggs, which is up by more than a third over the past year. Gas prices jumped 4.4 percent in December, although they were lower than a year ago.
This bad news for the outgoing Biden economic team comes on the heels of the Fed’s quarter-percent interest rate cut in mid-December 2024, after economic analysts predicted it would happen after the release of November’s on-the-nose, yet tepid CPI report.
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For comparison with the new report, I’ve included a flashback on December 2023’s economy snapshot from my colleague Streiff as well.
November CPI Number Rises; Experts Express Nearly Unanimous Take on Effect on Next Interest Rate Cut
December’s Inflation Rate Shows Bidenomics Is Still Kicking America’s Butt
In just a few days, we’ll be rolling into the second Donald Trump administration so this may be a moot point. But did anyone else happen to notice that there was no social media celebration from Team Biden on Wednesday over the CPI report? Instead, they, as usual, lauded the fact that the rate of growth of interest has slowed. It’s all they have.
