THE MORNING RANT: Government Propaganda Outlets (the US Media) Report Joyful News of Glorious Uptick in Inflation for Benefit of Grateful Citizens

The official inflation rate for the month of July increased to 3.2% from 3.0% the prior month. You wouldn’t know that inflation was worsening if you read the news reports from the regime media.

Of course, the inflation figures produced by the Department of Labor are fraudulently understated to begin with, as I’ve covered several times, but even then the inflation rate in July showed to be higher than it was in June. The media was wanting to report that the Biden economic miracle was progressing apace, and that inflation was decreasing, so they pretty much went ahead and reported that inflation was decreasing, even though it wasn’t true.

”Inflation Picks Up, but Details Under the Surface Are Encouraging” [NY Times – 8/10/2023]

Economists looked past the first acceleration in overall inflation in more than a year and saw signs that price pressures continued to moderate in July.

Prices moderated in July? Even though the inflation rate had been trending downward but is now increasing again?

Fresh inflation data offered the latest evidence that price increases were meaningfully cooling, good news for consumers and policymakers alike more than a year into the Federal Reserve’s campaign to slow the economy and wrestle cost increases back under control.

Wait…“price increases were meaningfully cooling” even though their pace of increase accelerated in July?

The Consumer Price Index climbed 3.2 percent in July from a year earlier, according to a report released on Thursday. That was the first acceleration in 13 months, and followed a 3 percent reading in June.

That is not what my household would describe as “meaningfully cooling.” We would describe it as “worsening.”

Economists were more keenly focused on another figure: the “core” inflation index, which strips out volatile food and fuel prices. That picked up by 4.7 percent from last July, down from 4.8 percent in June. And on a monthly basis, core inflation roughly matched an encouragingly low pace from the previous month.

So, if we exclude things like food and fuel, which are driving the rise in inflation, then there is another inflation rate that is even higher, but somehow that’s good news because that higher rate ticked down a fraction. My brain hurts trying to follow that logic. But the key point is, apparently, that so long as you forego food and fuel you may be seeing a decrease in the rate that prices are rising. Or something like that.

But then there is this amazing sentence in which the NY Times publishes a breathtaking lie, “inflation continued to show signs of seriously receding…”

The upshot was that inflation continued to show signs of seriously receding after two years of rapid price increases that have bedeviled policymakers and burdened shoppers — and the details of the July report offered positive hints for the future.

No, inflation did not recede, nor did it show signs of receding. The inflation rate increased! There is nothing in the inflation data that would indicate that it is receding at all.

Pravda just read this story and laughed at the NY Times’ desperate effort to spin the Party’s propaganda.

Reporting financial results and economic data compared to “analyst expectations” instead of against prior-period performance is another form of media disinformation.

Iowahawk has an ongoing gag about crashing his pickup truck into liquor stores. To borrow that metaphor, here is how the media might report the “good news” about his monthly crashes: “There was good news last month, as Iowahawk only crashed his pickup truck into three liquor stores in July. This welcome news was a 25% improvement over the expectation of analysts, who predicted four such pickup truck / liquor store encounters. However, it was still a tick up from the two liquor stores he crashed into in June.”

Here is CNBC clownishly reporting the “good news” that rising inflation was less than analysts’ expectations.

”July CPI Report Shows Inflation Gauge Rose 3.2%, Less Than Expected” [CNBC – 8/10/2023]

The consumer price index rose 3.2% from a year ago in July, a sign that inflation has lost at least some of its grip on the U.S. economy.

It took until the 11th paragraph to finally acknowledges that this is an increase in the inflation rate.

The annual rate for headline inflation, while below expectations, actually marked an increase from the 3% level in June.

Oh. But it beat “expectations.” So how is this impacting wage earners?

The comparatively tame inflation levels helped raise worker pay. Real wages increased 0.3% on the month and were up 1.1% from a year ago, the BLS said in a separate release.

What joyous news! What a non-sequitur!

“Tame inflation” helped raise worker pay? Yet year-over-year wages are up just 1.1% compared to a reported inflation rate that is triple the increase in wages.

Again, Pravda smiles in admiration at the US media.

The prize for most dishonest headline, however, has to go to Yahoo. With inflation rising again, but with the lapdog media determined to report good economic news, Yahoo is just flat out lying here.

”America's Biggest Brands Rethink Price Hikes in Disinflation Era” (Yahoo – 8/11/2023]

The Disinflation Era?! What the heck is disinflation? It certainly sounds like a synonym for deflation, conveying the idea that prices are falling. I follow business and economic news, but I have never encountered that word before, so I looked it up. “Disinflation” is a (misleading) term for when prices are still increasing due to inflation, but the overall inflation rate is trending downward.

In other words, disinflation means that prices are still rising, but less rapidly than they were before, and dishonest economists and journalists use the word to give the impression that prices are decreasing when they’re not.

But even then, this is still a dishonest use by Yahoo of the misleading term “disinflation,” since the story acknowledges that the inflation rate increased from June to July.

This final story isn’t about inflation, but it is another example in the past week of dishonest media trying to spin bad news for the politically favored as somehow being good news.

Electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian continues to lose tens of thousands of dollars per unit sold while hemorrhaging cash. It lost over a billion dollars in Q2 2023 alone, and its cash reserves dropped by $2 billion. It has barely a year’s worth of cash left at the rate it is being burned.

So how does the once-respectable business paper Barron’s report Rivian’s results?

”Rivian Earnings Impressed Wall Street; The Stock Is Falling Anyway” [Barron’s – 8/09/2023]

“Earnings” is an interesting word to describe a staggering loss, as is the term “impressed.” It would be fair to say that Rivian’s results have “impressed” my opinion about the EV business in much the same way that the Hindenburg “impressed” people about the viability of hydrogen airships.

Per the Wall Street Journal, Rivian lost $1.2 billion in Q2 2023 on sales of 12,640 units. That is a loss of about $95k per unit.

Gosh, why would the stock be falling in the face of such impressive “earnings”?

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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