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https://www.marketwatch.com/story/p...-might-not-matter-586912dd?mod=home-page

Memorial Day barbecue prices sizzle — the cost of one essential soars 28%

More Americans plan to have gatherings over the Memorial Day weekend, even though costs for some staples are rising.

Higher food prices will probably not deter Americans from getting together this weekend, with three out of four people planning to celebrate in some way. GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO

If you plan to barbecue this weekend, here’s some good news: You’ll get slightly more beef for your buck. However, unless you want to eat your burger plain, you’ll need to shell out more dough for condiments and buns.

A new study from data-analysis company Datasembly found that barbecue staples are more expensive than they were last year, with condiment prices leading the charge. The price of a 32-ounce bottle of ketchup has increased 28% since this time last year, going from $4.08 to $5.22, and a 20-ounce container of mustard has risen 13.04%, from $2.07 to $2.34.

What about the beef? Well, if you want ground beef for burgers, you’ll be paying a few pennies less per pound, on average, than you did last year. But if you want a steak, it will cost about 2.8% more than it did last year, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which came out in April. Pork-chop prices were also down by a few pennies per pound, while the price of bone-in chicken rose by about 8 cents per pound.

But higher prices will probably not deter Americans from getting together this weekend. Three out of four people are are planning to celebrate in some way, data-analysis company Numerator found, a share that’s virtually unchanged from last year — although this year, more Americans are planning to attend or host parties.

Americans just want to have a good time this year, Timothy Malefyt, a professor at Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business, told MarketWatch.

“People want to feel good again,” Malefyt said, adding that people want to distance themselves from their memories of the past few years living through the pandemic.

Last year, people were still “pulling out” of a pandemic mindset, but this year they want something “positive and celebratory,” he said. “There’s a sense of enchantment, wanting brands to deliver more, to look back to some of the traditions and times of getting people together. People want to feel good. They want to have a good time.”

But with more than three-quarters of consumers expecting higher prices for their Memorial Day staples, saving money will be a focus.

Up to 82% of consumers will be looking for ways to pinch pennies this weekend, according to Numerator data. They will searching out sale items, switching to store brands, shopping at dollar stores or buying smaller items.

For people hosting a Memorial Day barbecue on a budget, one tip is to take advantage of sales and of credit-card cash-back offers in the week before the holiday. There are some other good strategies as well, Lisa Thompson, a savings expert at Shopmium, an app for cash-back offers, told MarketWatch.

With meat usually the most expensive part of a barbecue, Thompson recommended stretching it out by making sliders, or smaller-sized burgers, instead of the usual one-third-pound patties. Making chicken or steak kebabs with vegetables is also more budget-friendly than serving whole portions of grilled meat.

And one final tip from Thompson: “Don’t shop hungry. It’s not just a cliche — people really do spend more when they’re shopping hungry. Even on nonfood items.”

I bought some frozen uncooked de-shelled large shrimp on sale today. 2 lb bag for 13 bucks. I thought that was pretty good.

I went to two restaurants this weekend for dinner. Both trendy, both usually packed. Both were pretty empty. Its cheaper to cook at home any more. Even with high grocery prices.

Restaurants gotta be struggling. High food prices. And customers staying home.

US inflation falls to lowest level since May 2021

Prices are moving in a more palatable direction for US consumers.

Annual inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, dropped in March for the ninth consecutive month. And for the first time since September 2020, grocery prices fell on a monthly basis.

Prices rose 5% for the 12 months ended in March, down from 6% in February, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. Annual CPI plunged to its lowest rate since May 2021, helped by year-over-year comparisons to a period when food and energy prices spiked amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Still, CPI showed some cooling on a monthly basis. The index, which measures price changes over time for a basket of goods, ticked up 0.1% from February, as compared to a previous 0.4% increase.

Shelter costs, which tend to reflect lagging data, were the largest contributor of the monthly gain, offsetting sharp declines across energy categories, according to the BLS.

The food at home index dropped 0.3% for the month, helped by lower prices for eggs (which fell nearly 11%) and fruits and vegetables (which declined 1.3%). The broader food category was unchanged (0%) for the first time since November 2020.

Economists were expecting an annual increase of 5.2% and a monthly gain of 0.2%, according to Refinitiv.

“It’s a good print, but it’s not the end of the game, it’s not the end of the story,” Erik Lundh, principal economist at the Conference Board, told CNN. “There’s more to come — hopefully, knock on wood — and we’re heading in the right direction.”

Stripping out the often-volatile components of food and energy, core CPI grew 0.4% for the month, resulting in a 5.6% annual growth rate. In February, core CPI accelerated 0.5% month on month and 5.5% year over year.

“On the surface, price pressures are lessening. But when the box is opened, [core inflation] accelerated to the highest rate since May 2021,” economist Sung Won Sohn, president of SS Economics and Loyola Marymount University professor, said in a statement. “This is well over the 2% target set by the central bank.”

He added: “More hikes in the interest rate are coming.”

CPI is one of the major inflation gauges that’s being watched like a hawk by the Federal Reserve, which is in the throes of a yearlong campaign to battle inflation through monetary tightening and stark interest rate hikes.

Base effects in play

The 1 percentage point drop in headline CPI is the largest downward swing seen in more than eight years; however, that feat was accomplished largely due to last year’s inflation spike.

“Inflation really started to take off last spring and through June,” Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, told CNN. “And so things are going to feel a lot better here in the next few months because of those base effects.”

Because month-to-month changes can be volatile, even in spite of seasonal adjustments, year-over-year comparisons typically can help smooth out some of that jumpiness.

But times have been anything but typical for the past three years. So, for the months ahead, moving averages become all the more critical to observe, Lundh said.

While the picture is more clear for the trajectory of headline CPI, it’s a little more opaque for core and “supercore” activity (core services, excluding housing), Zandi said.

The base effects are much less pronounced for core CPI, because the spring and summer inflation spike was driven by food, energy and goods prices.

“Core inflation is remaining more persistent,” he said. “I expect improvement really toward the middle and second half of the year when the cost of housing services really begins to slow.”

Shelter costs, as measured in the CPI, tend to lag more than other categories as the BLS collects rent data every six months and most rents don’t change too frequently. Private-sector data shows that apartment rents have fallen in recent months, suggesting an eventual cooldown in shelter prices will show up in the CPI.

Stripping out housing, however, still leaves a “supercore” inflation measurement that has remained stubbornly high.

“Supercore correlates with wages; thus, the Fed would be looking at some relief in this metric as a sign of slower wage gains,” Gary Pzegeo, head of fixed income at CIBC Private Wealth US, said in a statement. “Today’s report shows the supercore decelerated in March, but it remains a sticky component of inflation, running around +4% annualized on a three- and six-month basis.”

“This is too fast and a sign that the labor market remains offsides,” he added.

More Fed rate hikes still on the horizon

The March CPI trajectory doesn’t take another rate hike off the table, Lundh said.

“There was some encouraging news in the inflation data today, but I don’t think it’s sufficient to cause the Fed to pause,” he said. “So we’re expecting to see a [quarter-point] hike in the May meeting and even potentially another hike following that.”

The Fed’s fight grew more complex in March with the collapse of two regional US banks, which then caused turmoil in the financial industry. The Fed, the Treasury Department and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation stepped in to shore up depositors and prevent future bank runs.

However, there are expectations that the turmoil could mean future credit tightening, which in turn could dampen demand and even help the Fed in its inflation-fighting goals. However, it could also create more uncertainty about a future recession.

“The CPI is backwards looking and the Fed still has to consider how much of a credit crunch to factor into the economy,” said Gina Bolvin, president of Bolvin Wealth Management, in a statement.

While inflation has moderated since reaching a decades-high level last summer, the pace has been slower than anticipated as a strong labor labor market and resilient consumer spending has continued to fuel economic growth.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/04/12/us-inflation-falls-to-lowest-level-since-may-2021/

Bread was 2.59, now its $5...

And everything else we consume on a regular basis has pretty much followed suit. I will have a hard time getting excited about bread at $4.75.

Yes, showing it's headed back in the right direction is terrible news!

Noooobody said that. Just stating the facts and the way I feel about them. Not even placing blame.

It's heading "in the right direction" to a place it will never reach. The biggest footnote to the pandemic is that it was also "The Great Reset".

What do you mean by "a place it will never reach"?

I mean we'll never go back to pre-pandemic prices with most things we 'consume'.

I've spent my life in 'food'. I've seen plenty of resets on the wholesale market. I've never seen so many, from beginning to end of the supply chain. Manufacturing, shipping, brokers, middlemen, suppliers, wholesale customers... and finally to the retail market. Everyone along the way makes every imaginable excuse to bilk the next level. We'll see a slow recovery, but never to the prices we were used to. Really, our only hope is fresh competition. But since nearly every market is controlled at the top by huge conglomerates, even that proposition is not a given.

I've never seen anything do that. I've never seen prices go back to what they "used to be". I've seen it with past inflation periods. The costs go up but when inflation slows to a crawl they never go back down. I've seen it when it surrounds fuel prices. "Well we have to raise our prices because fuel costs have gotten so high." Then when fuel costs go back down, the prices never do. I'm not sure if we agree this is a typical situation under such circumstances, because in my lifetime my observations say it is. But we certainly agree that prices will never go back to being as low as they were before the surge in inflation. They never have and I don't suspect this will be any different.

I'm speaking beyond the regular curve of ever-increasing prices. So, when I say "return", I mean somewhere in the general neighborhood with an understood 'baked-in', logical increase. A normal, expected curve will always be there.

I'm not going to dig for graphs, it's obvious that this round of "inflation" was among the worst in our history. If you were to look at a ten year history, 2020 thru 2023 would jump off the page. That said, I've seen the cost of many (actually most) food goods just meander in the same price range for a decade or more. Sticking with food, and from the historical restaurant perspective... when something is out of wack in the beef market, we tell you to eat pasta by raising the price of beef... we feature chicken on special and seasonal menus. Pretty soon, like clockwork, beef prices would return to just about the same price. This time is different, because there are no options -- everything is through the roof. That's why I call it "The Great Reset".

Then we have the fact that the philosophy of 'sales' has changed drastically. Everything used to be based on cost plus... now it's based on the extreme of what the market will bear. Cheez-Its will push and push until sales suffer and then take the edge off to make the consumer think they're saving money lol.

Still have plenty of friends in the restaurant biz... their new pricing philosophy is "they're paying it, screw 'em". It's a no-win for the consumer because grocery stores are doing the same thing. Lack of options is the enemy right now in most categories... that's why we need some fresh competition that will look at the (seemingly archaic) notion of a fair profit margin in order to help flatten out this curve to a reasonable level.

Just my two cents.

I think you are 100% spot on. After there was a bit of a recovery my experience was that companies - supply/manufacturing side and wholesale channels and then contractors/subs -- all tried to make up for 2 /12 years of pain in as little time as possible. Prices and margins were through the roof -not only because of supply and demand but because of companies wanting their pound of flesh to recover from the painful market collapse through covid. Having done that those companies all seem loathe to go back to the same margins they were operating at (profitably) pre-covid.

In some ways it is a similar dynamic that we see in the work force - pre-pandemic the "rat race" was alive and well. Working long hours, doing what was perceived as necessary to get on or simply keep a job. . . . It seems that the attitude of many workers thru covid was to revaluate priorities - look at how little loyalty companies showed long tenured employees and decide that there is more to life than what your middle management boss with a chitty attitude and zero empathy wants you to do. Government subsidies no-doubt helped with that thought process ... but I think it's one of the reasons (for example) cooks, servers and wait staff in the restaurant industry are by and large all earning a base much, much higher than pre-pandemic. . . . Maybe the two situations are not that close, just me talking out loud and offering an opinion here.

Yep. And all those turning the profit wheel in the chain are going to ride this curve back down as sloooowly as possible.

As to the second paragraph, you hit the nail on the head. I think one of the things in that equation that goes understated is the part that has created the perfect storm -- "boomers". So many of these people were filling all the 'gaps' in the employment structure; and they were a very important part. A cannot count the amount of people that worked part time... "for something to do, for extra spending money, to be a part of something, etc, etc...", and are now officially 'retired'.

When those people checked out, they did it almost immediately. Combined fear of the virus and perspective (let's be honest, they of all people saw "life is too short" hit home) had them wash their hands of the whole thing and take a new look at what life should be down the stretch. In my industry, those were the people covering shifts when someone was sick, going above and beyond when situation dictated. "I know it's prom week, so I made sure to make no plans, use me wherever you need me".

If you peel back another important layer -- not to be too political, but those are the people that grew up with a sense of loyalty and had a certain respect for a "hard day's work". They smiled through it with a sense of pride of accomplishment that is sorely lacking with the youth that is filling those spots.

I agree that inflation is still bad and after the pandemic is was bad on a historic level depending on how far back in history you go. For some of us the 1980's economy isn't all that long ago. I was in my 20's with a young family during that time. So I do have a reference point for what bad economic times look like. And yes, this time does look different. Large profit margins could also be referred to as greed. I mean, I guess depending on your perspective. I've certainly never underestimated the role that greed plays in our economy.

But it doesn’t fit the hate filled anti Biden agenda… Just like McCarthy saying how well Biden dealt with his shenanigans and handed him his ass in negotiations. while claiming a win. You can’t make that crap up.

I’m mad that Biden negotiated with these brainless domestic terrorists, even the negotiation was a step too far for me. But at least he didn’t give them anything he wasn’t already planning to do. And he insured McCarthy would keep his job in how he handled it… Brilliant for what it was. Disgusting at the same time.

That’s not on Biden. It’s not on anything but unbridled capitalism. This is why you need strong leaders that will put big money in check. Any candidate that is not people first should get the boot. Social safety net policies are absolutely needed to fix this, then watch ‘sensible’ make a return to the American lexicon.

Nobody "won" in the budget negotiations. That's what compromise means. The way I see it without having looked closely at the deal, is that both the far left and the far right don't like the deal. That's when I know the government is working. Catering to either extreme while ignoring the majority of the nation isn't good for anyone. The "If I can't have it all the way I want I hate it" crowd is killing this country.

Centrist BS letting the country get dragged to the far right instead of having a spine created this mess. Stop your revisionist history. Pfft.

There's more of us than there are of you. Stop pretending your actually woke.

Sure there are. That’s hard for you to calculate from your middle safe space. Gen Z is progressive as hell, not centrist. But, you can do like republicans and deny truth all you want. Getting the do nothing centrists and ancient politicians out of government would be the best move this country could make beyond destroying MAGA.

Gen Z represents only 20% of the population. As with each generation, as people grow older their priorities change. And so does the way they vote. Many of the people I knew in school who were quite liberal when they were young, no longer are. For some reason you seem to think that people's priorities and opinions don't change over time. In fact they do. Just wait until they want to buy a nice home and provide a good living for their families. Over time many of them will be no different than the generations before them. They will put the values of what they think will promote their own goals and wishes for their families over the betterment of others. I mean if you stand up for helping those with less than you, that's less for you and yours, right?

Technology changes, fashion changes and mankind moves forward in many ways. But the way the human mind works is consistent. Gen Z didn't come up with some new concept about young people giving a damn.

As people mature, they generally get smarter. At least that is the way it is supposed to work.

So what's your damn excuse?

Or in many cases simply more cynical.

So it was Republicans saying higher wages would fuel inflation and now that it has been found that wasn't the case they claim some sort of victory? Imagine that. I suppose all of those new jobs that were created are false too?

Read it again?

The Fed hiked rates aggressively to stop inflation.

What was the main cause of inflation?

Jerome Powell said it was wage inflation & a hot labor market.

Well, the government just admitted their numbers were wrong

The Republicans said the same thing. So I guess they were both wrong. We've heard on this board for years now that the reason we can't raise wages is because inflation will run rampant. So it seems no matter which party runs our government, when it comes to this topic they're both wrong. But then again I've been saying that the entire time.

Any chance that these revisions are routine and ALWAYS get updated?>? I would think that's a STRONG possibility.

Funny to see a Right Wing HAck talk about the job numbers being massaged. For 8 years (nearly) under Obama we heard how the unemployment numbers weren't real - they were fake and massaged. Despite them being calculated the same way for generations.... Guess what when it was Trump's economy those same numbers (and methodology) was used to preach about how awesome trump was for the economy/employment. . . . What a joke.

this might be the most misguided/without-context comment that I have seen on this board in years.

We need like 45 community notes added to your comment.

Some Community Notes:


1 Inflation has run rampant.
2. the repubicans didn't want interest rates
3. the dems wanted to raise hourly pay rates
4. the cost of goods on products or services has gone up about 10% or more https://thehill.com/homenews/nexsta...23-these-5-graphs-show-prices-skyrocket/
5. gas prices for regular gasoline stands at $3.47 a gallon in May of 2023. in May of 2021 they were 2.85 in 2020 they were $1.81 https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=emm_epmru_pte_soh_dpg&f=m
6. people can afford less than they could a year ago
7. https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/26/economy/pce-inflation-fed-april/index.html
The Personal Consumption Expenditures price index rose 4.4% for the 12 months ended in April, up from a 4.2% increase seen in March, according to data released Friday by the Commerce Department. Rising energy prices (up 0.7% month on month) helped push up the headline PCE index; prices for goods and services increased 0.3% and 0.4%, respectively, while food prices showed a very slight decrease.
8. Inflation rate is at 4.9% https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/10/us-inflation-rate-april-2023 compared to last year.

Please explain.

whoops! my bad.

*They didn't want to increase interest rates.

Everything is relative. How are we performing vs the rest of the first world industrialized nations on the planet??? What's that you say??? They are ALL suffering from rampant inflation - Gosh. Did Biden do all of it? He's more influential than I thought huh. And in relation to the other 1st world nations our inflation is still rampant while theirs is under control - THAT'S Bidens fault maybe??? Oh -- What's that you say?? The US is outperforming the others in terms of speed of recovery !! Gosh..... So what is it that you are saying? Biden is doing a good job?? Is that your point. Well made sir.

Our economy leads the world economy. What happens here spreads.

Biden has nothing to do with how to handle inflation. Nor does any president. That is handled by the feds. So, don't give or take credit away from Biden. He did nothing.

Everone is bashing Powell because they messed up the data.

Lastly, the USA leads the world economy

Ahhh … so everyone else did. Pfft.

Including stormey D

Odd you say that. When the WORLD was suffering from covid, you know, the brand new virus, Trump was blamed for his handling of it. By the lefties, even though the scientists and doctors didn't know what to do.

Every nation was suffering - other than China, where it came from.

But now, inflation is not Biden's fault, "cause the rest of the world is suffering from it also". Can't make this crap up.