PPI: Massive Destruction Of The Consumer's Standard Of Living

02-16-2011 • Market-ticker.org

Yuck. This isn't just bad, it's horrifying. Let's look at the table inside because it's there that you have to be paying attention to cost-push problems: There's no possible good way to look at this. At the finished goods level we have a three month run-rate of about 0.8% monthly. Annualized this is a 10% increase. That's freaking monstrous. Worse however is in the intermediate goods; there we find a roughly 20% annualized inflation rate. And in crude goods? Hold on to your hat: Annualized on an average basis over the last four months it's roughly sixty percent. For the math wonks: ((1.047 + 1.013 + 1.065 + 1.033) / 4) ^ 12 Margin collapse? You better believe it. Either that, massive destruction of the consumer's standard of living or both. I've been hollering about this since August of last year. Folks, the data is not getting better. It's getting much worse. Discussion below (registration required to post)