⚡️🇫🇷FLASH - Face à l'#inflation, de plus en plus de Français vont faire leurs courses en Espagne. Certains font 700 km aller-retour en car depuis Marseille pour acheter des produits de première nécessité moins chers de l’autre côté de la frontière. (BFMTV)
Die Stimmung der Verbraucher hellt sich weiter auf und ist so gut wie seit zwei Jahren nicht mehr. Eine geringere Inflationsrate und gleichzeitige Lohnzuwächse stärken die Kaufkraft der Deutschen.
Our supermarkets have been caught price gouging again. It's impossible to export top-grade locally-produced food all the way to Japan and for it to end-up far cheaper. The government needs to step-in to stop this price gouging.
The government also needs to give back power to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. After years of undermining and by the successive RWNJ governments and nepotistic placements of their own pro-big-business colleagues high-up in the ACCC, the ACCC has been rendered toothless. We need the ACCC to be an independent umpire again.
You've probably heard that many people think inflation is still much higher than it actually is, but did you know that people have changed the definition of inflation (and didn't tell us economists)?
Inflation no longer seems to mean "rising prices" but, instead, "high prices". So 'inflation' can be high even as prices fall, the thought of which gives me a hell of a headache...
Unsurprisingly, given the problems for merchant shipping at the southern end of the Suez Canal, more ships are passing round the Cape of Good Hope... leading to longer journeys & container transfers at the west of the Mediterranean for shipment going to Italy, Greece etc.
Both add costs to shipments & as noted in a post yesterday, this will be another external driver of continued inflation.
Paris, le mercredi 22 mai 2024 – Plusieurs maires bretons réclament plusieurs millions d’euros à l’Etat pour affronter l’inflation, qui a aggravé de façon assez sévère les conditions de vie des résidents en Ehpad.
An inflationary spiral based on expectations. It is a very different one from a deflationary one.
In the case of supply chain disruption (think floods and drought) it's a supply shock and at best businesses have to scramble to adapt (invest etc) to get around the problem. But hammering COL demand is perverse.
In all cases, messing around with interest rates is largely an exercise in futility.
Britische Inflation geht im April deutlich zurück auf 2,3 Prozent
Die Inflation in Großbritannien ist weiter abgesunken und hat den tiefsten Stand seit fast drei Jahren erreicht. Gedrückt wurde sie durch fallende Gas- und Strompreise. Eine Zinssenkung der Bank of England rückt in greifbare Nähe.
Your regular reminder: inflation falling doesn’t mean prices are going down, they’re just rising by less.
We’re all still paying increasingly more for basics like food, energy and travel than we were pre-Truss, and that won’t change until / unless we have DEflation.
This point isn’t being made enough or sufficiently loudly in the media.
Now the Q. is whether the BoE will make good on its talk of a shift down in interest rates (but don't expect a major reduction), or whether oddly, the headline rate doesn't reflect what they see as 'real' inflation...
If the latter, then, they'll be some crocodile tears & an assurance that of course rates will be coming down soon.... just (again) not quite yet.
Watch the sado-monetarists shift the goalposts (again).
If you want to see a duopoly at work, Mastercard & Visa (who control 95% of all debit/credit card payments in the UK), have managed to raise their fees in real terms by over 30% in the last five years with, as the Payment Systems Regulator drily puts it. 'little evidence that the quality of service has improved at the same rate'!
Yup, that would be the sort of greedfaltion that we need to stamp on, not workers trying to regain their living standards (real pay levels).
If the impending drop in energy prices does bring inflation down to near the BoE's target, the continuing rumble from the sado-monetarists that inflation is driven by workers wage demands will be further compromised.
We can expect some tortured arguments about how really energy prices only impact inflation by easing of pressure on workers' demands for higher wages, while (as always) ignoring that workers wages in real terms are still languishing after a decade or more.
Well referenced article by a thinktank based in #Pakistan summarizing the mechanism for #ClimateChange derived food inflation being observed in the country.
Doesn't add anything new except the fact none of the listed issues are predictions - they are observations and cited.
#ClimateCrisis is here, and as in the Global North, farmers/gardeners can see it clearly, but the rest barely.
The thing I like least about the recent wave of inflation is having to now forensically check every cafe/restaurant menu to decide whether I can afford to eat there. Never really had to do that before. But prices are soaring while my freelance income remains much the same.