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America does not have a price problem. It has a wage problem.  For years, policymakers celebrated cheap consumer goods as proof that globalization was working. After China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001, U.S. corporations shifted production overseas at an unprecedented speed.  The result was a surge in imports and a collapse in the price of tradable goods such as electronics, apparel and furniture. The research paper “On the Persistence of the China Shock” found that import competition accounted for more than half of the decline in U.S. manufacturing employment in the 2000s.  Roughly 3.4 million factory jobs disappeared. Most displaced workers did not transition into equally productive, equal-paying employment. Many left the labor force completely. If the United States wants to solve its affordability crisis, it must rebuild the wage base that once supported the middle class.  MarketWatch March 18, 2026  https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-does-e...

  https://www.marketwatch.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-nasdag-eyes-four-day-losing-streak-dow-sp500-lower-ai-falters-jobs-report   Högre arbetslöshet kan vara goda nyheter Vad hände här? https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/12/vad-hande-har.html Blandat på Wall Street – nytt kursrekord för Tesla https://www.di.se/live/blandat-pa-wall-street-nytt-kursrekord-for-tesla/ Dow and S&P 500 end lower for 3rd straight day after weak U.S. jobs report Buy the dip https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/02/buy-dip.html Som ni väl redan har förstått är detta inte ett råd, utan en förklaring till vad som sker. If the stock market drops on a given day, retail investors impulsively buy the next day.  Their favourites are clear: on the Robinhood platform, the five most heavily owned stocks are all in the Magnificent Seven.  And with $7.5tn still sitting in money market mutual funds, small US investors may have buying power left. https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/12/w...

We who remember the 1970’s inflation got to watch new generations learn how it feels. They haven’t enjoyed it, to say the least. I’d like to reassure them the worst is behind us. Unfortunately, I’m not sure it is. Inflation went over 4% peaked in 2022 but remains stuck above the pre-pandemic rate. I see little reason to think it will fall much from here, at least in the next few quarters – and quite a few reasons to suspect it could rise. The inflation rate is a rate, not a level. If you have a year of, say 5% inflation followed by a year of 1% inflation then yes, the inflation rate is lower. But prices are still 6% higher than they were two years earlier.  Inflation is a permanent increase in the price level. Notice the gray bars, signifying recessions. Inflation accelerated during the deep and lengthy 1974-75 recession. This is what we mean by “stagflation.” Even without interest payments, the US is still running a deficit of around 4% of GDP — an extraordinary imbalance. ...

Den allmänna prisnivån i Sverige är i dag cirka 25 procent högre än 2020 I ett samtal med Financial Times kolumnist Martin Wolf pekar  Mervyn King  på en annan orsak till att priserna stack iväg: att centralbankerna tryckte pengar som galna. Mervyn King  var chef för Storbritanniens centralbank under åren 2003-2013 och räknas som en av världens främsta auktoriteter på penningpolitik. Under och efter pandemin stödköpte centralbanker som Fed, ECB och även Riksbanken värdepapper i en aldrig tidigare skådad omfattning för att förhindra en ekonomisk kollaps. Det handlade om tusen och åter tusen miljarder. Det innebar i sin tur att mängden pengar i omlopp växte i den snabbaste takten sedan åtminstone andra världskriget, i Sverige och USA med hela 40 procent på två år. I en kritisk utvärdering gjord av Riksrevisionen framgår att utvecklingen av penningmängden följdes upp vid ”enstaka tillfällen” men det verkar alltså inte ha kopplats ihop med inflationen. Att det egna penga...

    While Trump and team need to realize that inflation and the debt and deficits are going to be the true problem. The bond market and even the Federal Reserve seem to realize that. It is now 50–50 whether we even get a rate cut in December.  Inflation is not dead. It won’t be long before inflation is Trump’s problem. Just saying… John Mauldin 15 November 2024   https://www.mauldineconomics.com/frontlinethoughts/the-trump-inflation-problem Prisnivån Price Level talas det inte mycket om. De flesta kommenterar om KPI/CPI stigit med 0,2 eller 0,3 Englund blogg 31 maj 2024 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/05/prisnivan-price-level-talas-det-inte.html Tillbaka till Rolfs länktips 16-17 November 2024 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/11/rolfs-lanktips-16-17-november-2024.html

because central banks cannot control them, but are very much the focus for consumers.  The shock to these prices in the first two years of the Biden administration was the worst since the tail-end of the 1970s.  This is what has happened to the official index of food prices, on a log scale, since 1950: Longer Term: What About Fiscal Policy? Absent from all of these debates is fiscal policy.  The bond market might rebel even before the election as it becomes clear that both candidates are advocating policies that would directly widen the deficit.  John Authers Bloomberg 19 August 2024 https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-08-19/democratic-convention-trap-for-harris-is-more-74-nixon-than-68-chicago

“The speed and magnitude of the decline is notable with this spread making all-time lows going back to the early 1980s.   “Instead, we believe we are dealing with an unbalanced economy of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots.’” The cause is simple enough — while inflation may be receding, price levels are not, MarketWatch 17 June 2024 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/theres-an-unbalanced-economy-of-have-and-have-nots-heres-how-investors-should-approach-that-says-morgan-stanley-83ba9b40 Prisnivån Price Level talas det inte mycket om. De flesta kommenterar om KPI/CPI stigit med 0,2 eller 0,3 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/05/prisnivan-price-level-talas-det-inte.html Om inflation för de flesta betyder ”betalar jag mer för saker än jag brukade göra?”, upplevs den som hög även när priserna faller.  Som David Axelrod, chefsstrateg för Barack Obamas presidentkampanjer, konstaterar i WSJ-artikeln: det som räknas är hur människor uppfattar ekonomin.  Och Kate Bedingfield, tidigare...

  Inflationen sjunker, vilket gläder ekonomer. Prisnivån stiger, vilket bekymrar alla andra. https://www.scb.se/hitta-statistik/sverige-i-siffror/samhallets-ekonomi/kpi/