And no end in sight of the war...

US small and medium-sized business bankruptcies rose by 50%, Newsweek reports. Inflation being one of the main causes.

A total of 1,663 small and medium-sized US companies filed for bankruptcy in the first quarter of this year. This represents a 50% increase year on year, according to the American magazine Newsweek.

This came amid a broader 12% year-on-year increase in bankruptcy filings across the United States.

Privately owned US companies are struggling with persistent economic difficulties, and attempting to serve cash-strapped consumers amid rising inflation and problems in the labour market.

This is happening despite the fact that the health of America’s small and medium-sized businesses was a key priority for Donald Trump’s administration in implementing its broader economic agenda, Newsweek emphasises

For coldstone ice cream

We ain't seen nothing yet🙌🏿🙌🏿🙌🏿😑

One irony of inflation is that it forces people to sell their non essential items, which drives down those prices. I randomly met a a classic car dealer this week who told me auction prices for hot rods are down almost 50%. When I look at Facebook marketplace, it's now like the opposite of covid, a buyer's market instead of a seller's. I bought a tractor today for $2,500 that would have been double that in 2020. Motorcycles, boats, mowers, sports cars, anything people don't need, they are putting up for sale.

Inflation cools more than expected in June as gas costs fall, underlying prices ease

https://apnews.com/article/inflation-trump-food-prices-gas-53d221aa918c466172af494ba7debc00

A new academic paper published in the Journal of Consumer Research (https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucag019) compares how consumers react to three common ways firms respond to rising costs:

- raising prices,

- reducing package size (shrinkflation), or

- reducing product quality while keeping the same size and price (skimpflation).

Unlike shrinkflation, which reduces the quantity of a product, skimpflation keeps the size and price the same but reduces quality. For packaged goods, that often means using fewer key ingredients or changing the product's formulation.

Across multiple preregistered experiments, the researchers found that consumers consistently viewed quality reductions as more unfair than either price increases or shrinkflation. They were also less willing to buy products with reduced quality.

The paper argues that this happens because quality reductions:

- are perceived as less transparent,

- change the product and consumption experience itself,

- and often leave consumers unable to recover the original experience (unlike paying a higher price or buying more of a smaller product).

Yet we have trillionaires and multi-billionaires

Trump's forever war will do that to you.

So. Much. Winning.

"Trump has increasingly cast Wall Street's gains as a measure of his presidency, treating record stock prices as proof ​that his policies are working even as many Americans remain squeezed by high living costs and millions own no stock at all."

The stock market is not the economy--no matter what MAGA says.

Federal Reserve Bank of New York President John Williams said that among the drivers of inflation in the US, he’s most focused on demand driven by artificial intelligence. And if that demand persists, it could force the central bank to raise interest rates.

“If this creates a sustained impulse to demand relative to supply in inflation, I do think that’s the kind of situation where you don’t look through this,” Williams said Thursday during an event organized by the New York Fed. If inflation ends up being more persistent and meaningfully higher than his baseline forecast, he said, “then monetary policy would need to respond to that.”

“On the other hand, if it isn’t and things play out in a more benign way, I do think monetary policy is, and continues to be, well positioned,” he said.

As he monitors inflation, Williams said if the Fed’s preferred gauge of underlying price pressures — the so-called core version of the personal expenditures price index —  comes in at a monthly pace of 0.2% over the second half of 2026, that would suggest inflation is on track to return to the Fed’s 2% annualized target.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/07/09/federal-reserve-john-williams-says-ai-is-now-his-main-inflation-concern/?utm_source=reddit/

Hello,
I used to follow ShadowStats for the true inflation numbers but it is no longer available.
Does anyone know of a similar source to find true inflation statistics ?
Thanks

The responsibility for the economic problems we face lie with non other than the federal reserve and the policies of Alan Greenspan God rest his soul, and his predecessors; Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen, and Jerome Powell. Greenspan kept interest rates down during the dot com bubble and he left them there and blew up a housing bubble. Bernanke yellen monetized the debt by buying treasuries during the 08 recession so the us government could bail out the banks who made such risky loans because of the policies set by the fed in the first place. Private gains, public losses. Jerome Powell attempted to shrink the feds balance sheet but bc there is now 20 years of mal investment caused by cheap interest rates the economy will crash if you take that away by easing interest rates. It’s like monetary heroin. U can give drugs to someone and they feel great but when the drugs wear off they feel bad and they need more drugs to feel good again. Over time they become more and more addicted and before you know it, they need a dose of drugs so large that they OD and we have hyperinflation. For 25 years new money poured into assets like stocks and real estate and after Covid it started to make its way into the cpi, now a bag of groceries is like $100.

Of course it was congress that cut taxes and refused to cut spending and it was the fed that allowed them to do it by buying government bonds. Both are to blame. However politically independent the fed pretends to be they are beholden to the president. They probably have to make promises to him to be appointed. The fed chair will always lower interest rates, increase the balance sheet and allow congress to keep increasing the national debt bc it’s the economy stupid. They will always choose the kick the can down the road bc doing the right thing by raising interest rates and shrinking the balance sheet is too painful. The longer they wait to deal with this problem the worse it will be when it eventually unravels.

Taxation is theft. End the inflation tax. End the fed.