- US consumer prices were resurgent last month, dashing hopes of a slowdown and likely assuring another historically significant interest-rate hike from the Fed. The Consumer Price Index increased 0.1% from July, after no change in the prior month, Labor Department data showed Tuesday. A year earlier, prices climbed 8.3%, a slight deceleration, primarily due to recent declines in gasoline prices. So-called core CPI, which strips out the more volatile food and energy components, advanced 0.6% from July and 6.3% from a year ago. All measures came in above forecasts. Shelter, food, and medical care were among the most significant contributors to price growth.
- New Jersey won its third credit-rating upgrade this year, putting the state in better standing than when Governor Phil Murphy came into office in 2018. Fitch Ratings raised the rating to A, the sixth-highest investment grade, from A-. It came after one-step upgrades from Moody's and S&P Global Ratings in March. Before this year, the state hadn't notched a general-obligation bond upgrade since 2005.
- The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard says he has become more supportive of a third straight 75 basis-point interest rate increase. He also thinks Wall Street underestimates the likelihood that the Fed will hold rates at higher levels next year. ''I was leaning toward 75, and the jobs report was reasonably good last Friday," Bullard said in a Bloomberg News interview late Thursday in St. Louis. "I wouldn't let one data point dictate what we will do at this meeting. So, I am leaning more strongly toward 75 at this point.”
- Inflation will fall back down to the Federal Reserve’s 2% target by early 2025, the San Francisco Fed said in a research note Friday. Price increases, which reached a four-decade high this year, are moderating and will continue to do so as the US Central Bank raises interest rates, Sylvain Leduc, research director at the San Francisco Fed, wrote in a note. “The decline in inflation is expected to be gradual, reflecting the typical persistence in services inflation and lags in the effects of monetary policy,” Leduc wrote. “Overall, we expect inflation to be back at 2% by the beginning of 2025.”
- According to two recent reports, US non-profit hospitals, hit hard by higher labor and supply costs, may soon see their cash flow weaken enough to violate their bond borrowing agreements or at least trigger rating downgrades.
David Loesch
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