On Thursday, the U.S. Commerce Department release data showing that retail sales rose 0.8 percent in September to US$745 billion, largely driven by higher gasoline prices that boosted consumer spending at gas stations.
RELATED:
OPEC+ Decides To Keep Its Oil Supply Frozen in November
Excluding sales at gas stations, retail sales increased just 0.2 percent during the month, suggesting underlying consumer demand remained subdued.
While rising retail sales are generally seen as a sign of economic resilience, analysts said the September increase offered a less encouraging picture of consumer spending, as higher fuel costs accounted for much of the growth.
“Retail sales definitely looked weak in September,” said Dean Baker, a macroeconomist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Experts also noted that high gas prices are harming many Americans, forcing them to cut back or reduce their savings.
Mike Johnson:
— Power to the People ☭🕊 (@ProudSocialist) October 12, 2026
“Everybody's frustrated about fuel prices, but that's not related to policies. It's not related to the Republicans. This is related to the Strait of Hormuz.”
It is absolutely related to policy and Trump’s war on Iran, which Republicans wholly support. He is a…
Gary Hufbauer, a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said: “About 50 percent of households are living paycheck to paycheck, and if they are squeezed by gasoline prices, they have to cut back elsewhere. But the other 50 percent just reduce their savings to pay for higher gasoline prices.”
High energy prices could create a new wave of inflation. “The longer energy stays elevated, the more likely it generates a new wave of inflation. Another six months would run this risk,” Hufbauer said.
The data were released just weeks before November’s midterm elections, at a time when underlying prices are already high and gasoline prices threaten to make matters even worse. Republicans could take a beating at the polls over voters’ displeasure with high prices that show no sign of coming down.
However, even if Democrats take control of Congress, the party will have its work cut out after the dust settles, as pushing down gas prices means finding a solution to the war in Iran, which seems improbable at the moment.
At the same time, underlying inflation continues unabated. Experts said getting back to pre-COVID price levels requires the Fed to step in and raise interest rates. However, the central bank has shown no desire to hike rates to the 5 percent level, or higher, that economists say is needed to tame inflation.
Some experts noted that the GOP is caught between a rock and a hard place. Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Darrell West said, “Republicans are caught between fighting inflation and a slowing economy, which is a big problem for them in November.”
“Gas prices should drop when the Iran War ends, but it is not clear how (Donald) Trump brings that conflict to a reasonable conclusion,” West said.
teleSUR/ JF
Source: Xinhua
TOKYO — An unwelcome blast of US inflation is blowing across Asia’s markets. September’s hotter-than-expected price data revived concerns that the Federal Reserve will keep rates higher for longer, threatening fresh pressure on currencies, capital flows and economic growth across the region.
Last month’s 3.7% year-on-year increase in consumer prices didn’t just exceed forecasts. It ensured the Fed is on an even bigger collision course with both the bond market and US President Donald Trump’s White House. It’s arguably the last thing both Trump and US Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh wanted to see less than three weeks ahead of the mid-term elections.
The post Hot US inflation singes Asia as higher-for-longer Fed rates loom appeared first on Asia Times.
Allison Joyce/Bloomberg via Getty Images
If you've gotten a raise over the last two years, almost all of those gains have now been eaten by inflation.
That is, if you're the average wage-earner, considering the latest statistics released this week showing that prices were rising at a faster clip than expected.
It's more evidence that affordability challenges in the US economy aren't going away. It also means that average hourly pay, which had risen after Donald Trump took office in January 2025, is now right back to where it started, when taking inflation into account.
The average hourly wage was $35.84 in January 2025, according to federal statistics, or $37.79 in today's dollars, adjusted for inflation. The average hourly wage last month was $37.81 — basically unchanged over the past 20 months.
Wednesday's consumer price index inflation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics came in hotter than expected, with prices up 3.7% over the year in September. Economists had expected a 3.6% increase, and the rate was well above August's 3.4%.
"We read the September CPI report as another piece of evidence that the US is facing a persistent inflation problem," economists at BNP Paribas said in a note to clients.
That problem means high prices — including gasoline that was up 9.1% in September compared to the previous month — are gobbling up pay increases you might get at work.
Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, underlined that consumer price growth since 2025 has eroded nearly all wage gains, citing the impact of the war in Iran, which began at the end of February, on Americans' wallets.
"This is a very different picture from President Trump's first term when wages were up over 15%, well above about 8% inflation," Long said. "It helps explain the frustration many households feel right now with the economy."
Higher prices are adding to a general sense of malaise about the economy. The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index dipped to 46.3 in October, down from 71.7 in January 2025.
Joanne Hsu, the director of the survey, said higher gas prices driven by the Middle East conflict have added to the ongoing cost-of-living pressures over the past several years.
Higher prices and inflation outpacing wage growth can be especially tough for Americans who are on tight budgets or living paycheck to paycheck. "When we look at the majority of the US workforce, people who are middle- and lower-income households, higher costs in things like gas and groceries take up a larger share of their income," said ZipRecruiter economist Nicole Bachaud.
It's important to note, there is more than one way to read the wage numbers as they relate to inflation — and in some ways, workers have actually come out ahead.
For example, average weekly earnings have grown faster over the last year than average hourly earnings, as the number of hours the typical worker works has edged up.
The Trump administration, when asked for comment, highlighted annual earnings. "Under President Trump, private sector workers have seen their wages continue to outpace inflation, with average annual earnings growing by more than $600," said White House spokesperson Matthew Middleton.
The midterm elections are in just a few weeks, and affordability will likely be a key concern.
An Economic Innovation Group and Echelon Insights survey in September asked people what elected officials should prioritize most to make life better for workers. The survey said that 45% of American workers wanted officials to prioritize reducing the cost of everyday essentials, and 23% wanted them to focus on making housing more affordable.
Long, at Navy Federal, said the "modest increase" in grocery prices is a silver lining in the latest consumer price index report. Food at home, which includes groceries, rose at a slower pace than April's 2.9%, with prices increasing 1.8% year over year in September.
"But it's inevitable food prices will likely rise in the months ahead as higher diesel and transport costs are passed along to consumers," Long said.
There are other ominous signs that inflation could worsen. Thursday's producer price index report showed that final demand prices rose 1.3% in September, the highest since 2022.
Two years ago, central bankers on three continents all but declared victory over inflation. Markets took them at their word, and plenty of investors built their portfolios on the assumption that the price surge of 2022 was behind us. That assumption was wrong, and the consequences are now showing up in almost every major economy […]
The post The inflation conflagration is back and here to stay appeared first on Asia Times.
When Vivek Ramaswamy ran for president in 2024, he liked to describe himself as a "national libertarian" whose worldview included skepticism of new Middle Eastern wars and support for free trade (provided it wasn't with China).
In a midterm election season in which voters are increasingly angry about higher prices born of protectionist tariffs and high gas prices caused by a new Middle Eastern war, that would seemingly give Ramaswamy, now running for governor of Ohio, a straightforward story to tell about how he'd bring costs down.
Unfortunately for the Republican gubernatorial candidate, the person responsible for the tariffs and the war is President Donald Trump, whose support he's counting on to get him over the finish line in a surprisingly close race against Democrat Amy Acton.
The latest polls show Ramaswamy slightly ahead of Acton, with many voters still undecided.
Other Republican midterm candidates, most prominently Mike Rogers in Michigan, are escaping this bind by criticizing the tariffs and the war without explicitly naming the president who's responsible for both.
Ramaswamy has chosen a different tactic: Shift the conversation to other sources of voters' cost-of-living anxiety that can't be directly laid at Trump's feet.
In the last weeks of this election campaign, Ramaswamy has focused like a laser on two proposals he says will deliver cost relief to Ohio voters. The first is his proposed rollback of homeowners' property taxes. The second is a moratorium on new data center construction.
Like many Midwestern and Western states, Ohioans' property tax bills have shot up in recent years, driven by a pandemic-era spike in home values.
That's in turn sparked a full-blown property tax revolt in the state. The Republican-controlled Legislature passed a raft of property tax relief measures in 2025. Activists are also collecting signatures to place a full abolition of taxes on real property on the statewide ballot next year.
Ramaswamy hasn't endorsed full property tax abolition, but he is promising voters that he will roll back property tax assessments for homeowners to pre-pandemic levels.
On the data centers, he has staked out a very restrictionist position.
Ohio is currently one of the leading states for data center development. Pew Research counts 57 projects currently in the pipeline there, attracted by cheap land and a robust power grid.
The state's data center boom has caused a backlash in rural communities, where voters have objected to data centers' consumption of land and electricity and the special tax incentives some projects have received.
On the ballot in 10 Ohio localities this November are initiatives that would impose additional restrictions on data center development.
Ramaswamy has proposed to go further with a statewide moratorium that will remain in effect until the Legislature passes laws that not only require data centers to cover the full costs of the power infrastructure they need, but also provide property tax rebates and free electricity to nearby homeowners.
Local property tax cuts paired with local reductions in spending would, of course, be well in line with a small government worldview.
But the residential property tax rollback Ramaswamy has proposed doesn't directly do that.
Instead, it would reduce property tax revenues and then leave it up to localities to make up for the lost revenue somehow. That could result in spending cuts.
It could also result in localities shifting tax burdens onto commercial properties, raising non-property taxes (like sales taxes), or relying on the state government for more of their revenues.
In the former two scenarios, local tax regimes would become more hostile to growth, given that property taxes are considered one of the most "efficient" taxes. In the latter scenario, the link between people who pay taxes and the people who consume taxpayer-funded local services would become more distant.
Neither is ideal.
While some data centers in Ohio have received tax subsidies, Ramaswamy's proposed solution is to block new data centers until they're legally required to subsidize their neighbors with free electricity and other community benefits.
All of that is to say that it's a shame to see Ramaswamy adopt increasingly non-libertarian positions to avoid making critiques of Trump's cost-increasing tariffs and Iran war that would align with his erstwhile "national libertarian" worldview.
It's ironic, too, that, in trying to avoid making those critiques, Ramaswamy has wound up being more restrictionist on data centers than Trump himself.
In an August Truth Social post, the president famously urged local communities to "let Data Reign" and welcome data center development. Those that did would become "rich and successful," he predicted. Those that didn't would remain "poor and backward."
At a rally in Vandalia, Ohio, over the weekend for Ramaswamy and Republican Senate candidate John Husted, Trump reiterated his support for data centers, saying, "We want them. Look, there's so much money to be made for Ohio. You can't just turn them off. They'll go to China."
Rather than criticize the president's statist interventions, Ramaswamy is talking up his own instead. Ohio will be poorer as a result.
The post To Avoid Criticizing Trump's Tariffs and War, Vivek Ramaswamy Takes on Data Centers appeared first on Reason Magazine.
With Social Security barreling toward insolvency, the government is increasing benefits in January.
On Wednesday, the Social Security Administration (SSA) announced that retirees will receive a 3.6 percent increase in Social Security benefits next year. The raise, which was unveiled shortly after the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported consumer prices rose 3.7 percent year over year in September, will amount to an increase of $75 per month for the average beneficiary. It also represents a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) that will be 0.8 percentage points higher than last year's, which was 2.8 percent, and 0.9 percentage points higher than what was projected by the Social Security Trustees, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
"Social Security will implement this cost-of-living adjustment for 76 million Americans, giving them greater financial stability," said SSA Commissioner Frank J. Bisignano in a press release. "Under President Donald J. Trump, Social Security is delivering better, faster, higher-quality service for the American people."
But the announcement comes as Social Security faces a looming funding cliff.
The program has been spending considerably more than it receives for years, thanks in large part to the U.S. demographic problem: Birth rates have collapsed, life expectancy has risen, and there are fewer working-age people paying taxes to fund retirees. In 2025, the program collected $1.45 trillion in revenue and spent $1.61 trillion, leaving a $160 billion shortfall. Trust fund reserves covered the gap, but they are rapidly dwindling. In June, Social Security's Trustees projected that, without legislative changes, incoming revenue would cover only 78 percent of scheduled retirement and survivor benefits by late 2032—a 22 percent shortfall. Combined retirement and disability funds are expected to run out by 2034. There are a handful of fixes, including raising the retirement age, reducing benefits, raising the cap on earnings, means-testing the program, privatizing it, or getting rid of it altogether.
While many lawmakers have acknowledged reality, Congress remains divided on how to address the issue. In August, Sen. Ron Wyden (D–Ore.) blocked a proposal from Sen. Bill Cassidy (R–La.) to establish a congressional process to consider reforms, arguing that it would slash retiree benefits and help billionaires "avoid paying their fair share."
"People are objecting to doing their job," Cassidy complained in September. "Congress needs to fix Social Security this year."
What makes Wednesday's increase even more unjustified is the fact that older Americans are already among the wealthiest age groups in the country. According to the Federal Reserve's latest Survey of Consumer Finances released last week, households headed by someone aged 75 or older had a median net worth of $504,900 in 2025, compared with just $33,000 for households headed by someone under 35. Despite their relative wealth compared to working-age people, retirees are getting a COLA increase that is greater than the average worker, whose wages have risen by 3 percent in the last year.
For the very wealthiest beneficiaries, the 2027 COLA will constitute an enormous increase. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the highest-earning couples who retired this year will receive a combined increase of $3,600, meaning that their combined benefits would exceed $100,000 next year. However, without congressional action, Social Security recipients could expect a 22 percent cut that, in 2032, would wipe out the previous nine years' COLAs all at once.
Despite years of warnings about Social Security's deteriorating finances, Congress has yet to enact reforms to avert the looming shortfall. For now, beneficiaries can look forward to larger checks in January, even as the program moves closer to the day when it can no longer pay the benefits it has promised.
The post Social Security Is Running Out of Money. Benefits Are Rising 3.6% Next Year Anyway. appeared first on Reason Magazine.
The federal government just closed fiscal year 2026 with a deficit of nearly $2 trillion, according to figures the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released last Thursday. Only the two pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 were worse. Today, though, there is no recession and no emergency. These enormous budget deficits are the new normal.
The usual response to a deficit warning is that the government just needs more money. It doesn't. Thanks to the remarkable strength of the private sector, federal revenue rose by 3 percent, to more than $5.4 trillion, over the fiscal year. But spending rose by 6 percent, reaching $7.4 trillion.
Some will blame the Supreme Court for striking down most of President Donald Trump's tariffs and forcing the government to issue refunds. But even if Washington had kept the $130 billion in illegal levies, it would cover less than one-tenth of the gap. Tariffs were never a serious revenue source at our insanely high level of spending.
Look at where the money went. Spending on the three main entitlement programs—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—grew by 7 percent. That's faster than total spending growth. Defense grew by 5 percent. Interest on the debt rose by 11 percent, exceeding $1.1 trillion. That last figure is the bill for every earlier year of borrowing—years when Washington was sending clear signals that it isn't serious about fiscal responsibility.
If you want to see where such irresponsibility can lead, look at France. The country that big spenders from Paul Krugman to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) have cited as proof that big government is viable and full of upsides is now on the brink of a serious crisis. France's debt equals 120 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), and interest payments are rising quickly. Slow growth and social unrest aren't helping.
The U.S., of course, has some advantages that France doesn't, largely because we're a country of innovators with a private sector unmatched at creating wealth. Nonetheless, debt that is swelling out of control should still worry us. First, the same anti-wealth and anti-growth forces that brought France to where it is now are gaining popularity here. Second, we too will see debt reach 120 percent of GDP in a few years, and our interest payments are already consuming an alarming share of resources.
A wise Congress would put us on safer footing if only because debt raises interest rates for everyone, from homebuyers to small businesses. This operates as a drag on growth, and hence on wages. In other words, controlling debt should be part of an affordability agenda in the same way as streamlining regulation.
When legislators decide to take affordability seriously, I recommend looking at a September Advancing American Freedom (AAF) report on this topic. Its section on fiscal restraint offers a useful menu of reforms, including targeting the programs that most drive the debt.
Start with Social Security. Under current law, benefits will be cut by roughly 20 percent when the program's trust fund runs dry in the early 2030s. Nobody believes Congress will actually let that happen, but we'd better hope its answer isn't to double down by borrowing the difference between payroll taxes and benefits.
Nor are tax increases an option. The payroll tax meant to fund entitlements is now 12.4 percent of wages. It began at 2 percent when Social Security was first rolled out. It is also the most burdensome tax for many Americans. Enough already. The fixes AAF fellow Rachel Greszler proposes are worth considering: Index the retirement age to life expectancy, use an accurate inflation measure for cost-of-living adjustments, and move gradually toward a flat universal benefit that protects lower-income retirees while ending Social Security's de facto welfare for the wealthiest.
Next is Medicare. More than 40 percent of its financing already comes from general revenue rather than from payroll taxes. The report recommends converting the program to premium support, giving beneficiaries a fixed contribution to spend on traditional Medicare or on competing private plans. It would also raise the eligibility age to 67, matching Social Security, and trim subsidies for well-off seniors. That's a start.
As for Medicaid, the problem is one of pricing. And yet competition based on price—the best cost-control tool—has never been seriously tried. Washington covers 90 percent of the cost of states' expanded Medicaid programs for adults. A state can buy a dollar of spending with just a dime of its own money. Changing the states' incentives would be key here. Implementing risk-adjusted per-capita caps, through which the federal government would give states a fixed amount per enrollee, would do just that. States would pay for their own inefficiencies or would be able to use every dollar they save by becoming more efficient.
The same logic supports returning more welfare programs to states, starting with the federal share of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. State governments have to balance their budgets in some form.
None of these reforms are painless. But the alternatives will prove far more painful. The U.S. will either continue paying a slow, unlegislated tax called inflation or face a fast, ugly fiscal crisis when bond buyers stop giving Washington the benefit of the doubt.
COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS.COM
The post The Federal Government Collected $5.4 Trillion. It Still Can't Pay Its Bills. appeared first on Reason Magazine.
Chip makers and tech investors such as Samsung and SoftBank plunge as potential interest rate hikes spook markets
An accelerating sell-off of AI-linked shares has hit global markets, as fears over rising inflation and future interest rate hikes spooked traders already wary of the heavily indebted sector.
South Korea’s benchmark Kospi 200 index, which is heavily skewed towards the companies that make memory chips, fell more than 8% overnight to a six-month closing low, triggering circuit breakers that brought trading to a halt at various points.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Lee Jin-man/AP
© Photograph: Lee Jin-man/AP
© Photograph: Lee Jin-man/AP
To avoid falling into indigence, the same family requires at least 738,690 pesos ($478), according to the total basic basket (CBT) and basic food basket (CBA) figures in Indec’s most recent report.
So far this year, the CBT grew 24.7% and the CBA 25.3%, both above accumulated inflation of 23.6% through September, when it rose to 1.9%, according to the report. Year-on-year, the CBA rose 38.7% and the CBT 40%, both above the 33.4% year-on-year inflation, the report said.
RELATED: Argentina Seeks International Tribunal Measures Against Malvinas Islands Oil Project
Julián Neufeld, an economist at the Fundación Libertad y Progreso cited by the newspaper Perfil, said the prices that weigh most heavily on lower-income households “have been rising above the general index, and that erodes purchasing power precisely in the most exposed segment.”
Neufeld explained that since wages adjust by the Consumer Price Index when collective labor agreements allow, and poverty levels are set by the baskets, a substantial inflation gap between the two strongly conditions poverty and indigence levels, he said.
According to the economist, in the first half of this year, with the inflationary shock concentrated in meat and fuels—goods with great weight in the baskets—these rose above the general level, pushing many families below the poverty line, he said.
🥬 Las verduras aumentaron 23,8% en septiembre en el Mercado Central y más que duplicaron su precio en un año
— Agencia El Vigía (@AgenciaElVigia) October 12, 2026
Un informe del Centro de Economía Política Argentina (CEPA) reveló una fuerte aceleración en los precios mayoristas de las hortalizas durante septiembre: la canasta… pic.twitter.com/iiDBCfzgh8
Login