Free Republic

Price inflation is no coincidence. It is a policy. Governments, along with their so-called experts, attempt to persuade you that price inflation stems from anything other than the consistent, albeit slower, rise in aggregate prices year after year. Issuing more currency than the private sector demands, thus eroding its purchasing power and creating a constant annual transfer of wealth from real wages and deposit savings to the government. Oil prices are not a cause of inflation but a consequence. Prices increase as more units of the currency used to denominate the commodity shift to relatively scarce assets. Therefore, oil prices...

Surge beats analyst expectations.. Electricity producer prices up 174.9% on the year.. Excluding energy, August up only 14% year-on-year ... German producer prices rose in August at their strongest rate since records began both in annual and monthly terms, driven mainly by soaring energy prices, raising the chances that headline inflation will surge even higher. Producer prices of industrial products increased by 45.8% on the same month last year, the Federal Statistical Office reported on Tuesday. Compared to July 2022, prices rose 7.9%, it added.. ... The surge was considerably stronger than expected, with analysts having forecast a 37.1% year-on-year...

Does increasing the minimum wage increase GDP? Bloggingstocks' Joseph Lazaro outlined the theory that it might back on 1 August 2009, shortly after the U.S. federal minimum wage reached its current level of $7.25 per hour (emphasis ours): ... the U.S. Federal Reserve will be monitoring prices and costs to see if the higher minimum wage is creating inflation havoc at a time when U.S. businesses least need another concern to deal with. Businesses have enough to worry about; and some are struggling just to maintain operations for another quarter or two -- the recession has been that damaging. But...

Get ready to pay double or even triple the price for fresh produce in the coming weeks after the worst freeze in 60 years damaged and wiped out entire crops in northern Mexico and the southwestern U.S. The problem started less than a week ago, when our nation was focusing on the Superbowl and sheets of ice falling from Texas Stadium. Farmers throughout northern Mexico and the Southwest experienced unprecedented crop losses. Now devastation that seemed so far away, is hitting us in the pocketbooks. "We've had to double and triple some prices and consumers come in and it's quite...

- The only thing that made me gasp this week was that the banks suddenly dumped $22 billion in bonds last week. Kinda weird, but things have been more weird, I think. Of course, the Treasury is still issuing debt with both hands, bringing us to almost $7.9 trillion. The interest on the national debt totaled $321.6 billion in 2004, which works out to an average of 4.1%, and it, and the total debt, will obviously be higher this year. - Nursing a killer hangover and flipping through the TV dial in my boredom, I ended up watching C-SPAN 2,...

CLEVELAND -- Police seized more than $1 million in drugs this week through the hard work of two Ohio State troopers, reported NewsChannel5. The first bust came when the Criminal Patrol Tactical Squad was looking for suspicious activity on the Ohio Turnpike Wednesday, and seized 20 pounds of marijuana. The marijuana was a rare high grade from British Columbia, worth more than $900,000. Two hours later, another bust occurred on the same Interstate when a trooper pulled over a pickup truck for tailgating. "His story wasn't quite right, so (the trooper) called for a drug dog which came to the...