A new federal report from the Commerce Department for December, which follows a Labor Department report already released for that month, again shows a drop in the rate of inflation. Decreases were reported in the rates of increase in prices seen in the prior month (meaning November) and in the same month in the prior year.
The Personal Consumption Expenditures data from the Commerce Department showed prices rising in December by just 0.1 percent compared to November and by an even 5 percent compared to December 2021. Just in recent months, the rates were higher in the numbers from this source, with the rate of increase from the same months in the prior year at 6.3 percent in both August and September and the rate of increase from the preceding month at 0.4 percent as recently as October. The team at the Commerce Department responsible for these numbers also produces versions without prices for food and energy, which can prove especially volatile. Comparing December with the preceding month, nixing food and energy from the calculations grows the rate of price increases to 0.3 percent — but on a one-year basis, the rate of inflation drops to 4.4 percent.
In December, the Commerce Department’s measurements show personal income in current dollars was up 0.2 percent from the preceding month, marking another federal measurement showing that rate of increase outpacing inflation.
The fluctuations in gas prices throughout recent months have been well-documented. Recently, such costs have ticked back up, although the prices seen for single gallons of regular gas remain far below the record highs from the middle of last year. One of the policies implemented by the Biden administration in response to mounting gas prices, which mirror high rates of inflation that have been seen throughout economies in the G-20 group of nations, was selling some of what was in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which was evidently positioned to boost available supplies and help with bringing prices lower. Oddly, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) just recently revealed she was furious at the president doing so and introduced a failed measure in the House that would have evidently removed the president’s power to make such sales at all. (She later got a far more limited version of her proposal approved by the House.)
She described what Biden did as tricking Americans, which is just objectively bizarre. Is there some secret button she thinks he’s supposed to push to lower gas prices? Does she think the president actually shouldn’t intervene, despite the overpowering tidal wave of GOP complaints every time a hint of an economic issue emerges? Maybe that the president’s actions supposedly obscured what was really going on… or something? Biden’s actions weren’t a secret. The administration openly discussed the very basic policy that they undertook.
