Last week the US central bank, the Fed, made it clear to investors and all the rest that it was going to war on inflation, regardless if it meant collateral damage to millions of future unemployed. The Fed’s 3rd 75 basis pts rate hike also set off a firestorm of global currency collapse and stock market contractions. While the Fed admits it can’t do anything about supply side causes of inflation or corporate price gouging–which constitutes two-thirds of inflation, it has signaled it will try to make up by crashing consumer and small business demand. The other war is the intensifying conflict in Ukraine. The US/NATO has begun playing a bigger role behind the scenes assisting the Ukraine army in recent gains. In response, Russia has begun to mobilize 300,000 more reservists needed to match Ukraine’s 300,000 forces in the field. Russia’s ‘Special Military Operation’ (SMO), based on limited force commitment in the field, is now over. What replaces it remains to be seen, but the likelihood is a greater escalation in coming months.
TO LISTEN TO my Alternative Visions radio show on the above ‘two war’s of Friday, September 23, 2022 GO TO:
https://alternativevisions.podbean.com/e/alternative-visions-092322-two-wars-the-fed-and-ukraine/
The BLS database on Consumer Price Index shows a decline, the smallest of declines, between July (296.276) to August (296.171). Maybe we have plateaued? https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost — And housing prices are 34% higher than at the end of 2019. The ratio between the median household income and the median priced house has crept up unrelentingly since 1976 to 2022, from 3.5 to 6.2 times median income (author’s calculation, I used the U.S. Census and the Fed). At 3.5 times today’s median household income, the sales price of a typical house would be $245,000, not $422,000. The costs of healthcare and education and childcare have also increased, squeezing middle and low incomes households, making life a drag, a weary treadmill to afford basics.
Reblogged this on Calculus of Decay .