Dog Days of Summer '08...

I have not been in the writing/blogging mood at all recently. I am attributing this primarily to the weather and the busy schedule around coaching Little League baseball. One of the primary interests on my radar, however, has been the continued inflationary pressures in the economy. This article in today's NYT highlights just how bad it was in the month of June. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the economy is recovering yet and with inflation pushing up prices, we are caught in a situation that precipitates reminiscent talk of the stagflation days of the late 70's.

The Consumer Price Index, which measures prices of a batch of common household products, rose 1.1 percent in June, the Labor Department said. That increase caps a year where inflation has surged to proportions seen by some as threatening the stability of the American economy. In the last 12 months, the price index has risen 5 percent, the biggest annual jump since May 1991.

The report reinforces what many economists, including those at the Fed, have warned about for months: Americans are being forced to pay significantly higher prices even as the job market weakens and big employers like General Motors are laying off thousands of employees.