One day…
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It's Wednesday...
The BLS released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) report this morning.
The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in September after rising 0.4 percent in August, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 3.7 percent before seasonal adjustment.
The index for gasoline rose 9.1 percent in September, accounting for over half of the monthly all items increase. The energy index increased 5.2 percent over the month following a 2.1-percent increase in August. The shelter index rose 0.4 percent in September after rising 0.3 percent in August. The index for food was unchanged in September, as the index for food away from home increased 0.2 percent and the index for food at home fell 0.1 percent.
The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.3 percent in September, as it did in August. Indexes that increased over the month include recreation, used cars and trucks, education, airline fares, medical care, and apparel. Conversely, the index for communication was among the small number of major indexes that decreased in September.
The all items index rose 3.7 percent for the 12 months ending September, a larger increase than the 3.4-percent increase reported for the 12 months ending in August. The all items less food and energy index rose 2.6 percent over the year, following a 2.4-percent increase over the 12 months ending August. The energy index increased 20.4 percent for the 12 months ending September. The food index increased 2.5 percent over the last year.
BLS. 10/14/2026.
Ben Casselman brought the charts...
Oil prices, which have surged during the war with Iran, are obviously a huge part of this. Gasoline prices are up 34 percent over the past year. Fuel oil, used in home heating, is up a whopping 74 percent. https://t.co/cYJqXMtgGT
— Ben Casselman (@bencasselman) October 14, 2026
But don't be too quick to dismiss this as just an energy story. Core services excluding housing, which some at the Fed see as a valuable measure of underlying inflation, has also picked up, rising at a 4.6 percent annual rate over the past three months. https://t.co/cdN3GSuQEE
— Ben Casselman (@bencasselman) October 14, 2026
Average hourly earnings, adjusted for inflation, are now essentially back to where they were when Trump returned to office. Meaning that, on average, Americans have experienced almost zero real wage growth during Trump's second term. https://t.co/bM3TnsEc0S
— Ben Casselman (@bencasselman) October 14, 2026
On the heels of the inflation numbers, it was announced that this year's COLA increase will be 3.6%.
Social Security COLA will be 3.6% in January https://t.co/PMnCyjeRG0
— Axios (@axios) October 14, 2026
Social Security recipients will see the largest rise in their monthly payments in four years in January, with a 3.6% cost-of-living adjustment.
Driving the news: The Social Security Administration announced the 2027 COLA adjustment for 76 million recipients of retirement and disability benefits, which by law is calculated based on the Consumer Price Index for the July-through-September quarter.
AXIOS. 10/14/2026
The increase will add about $75 a month to Social Security checks. A bunch of reporters did the math so I wouldn't have to.
In more "Golden Age" news...
BREAKING: 2026 has now seen more days with average gas prices over $4/gal than any year before: 158 days
— Patrick De Haan (@GasBuddyGuy) October 14, 2026
In Case You Missed It News, Like I did...
CNN (10/14/2026):
While Greenland’s deputy mining minister Jørgen Hammeken-Holm acknowledged that “there are activities by US companies,” he told CNN that “we are very far away from ‘massive’ exploration.”
“There are many smaller explorations underway but these could take years to become operational,” he added, echoing researchers who have pointed out the difficulties and enormous expense involved in extracting resources from Greenland.
Many of the island’s deposits are located in remote areas above the Arctic Circle, where there is a mile-thick polar ice sheet and little infrastructure. Approximately 80% of the island is covered in ice.
CNN (10/14/2026).
Narrator: Master Negator simply lies his way through it. Film at eleven.
President Trump says he opposes socialism while taking government stakes in private companies. Republicans are enabling him and drafting a blueprint for government control of the economy, reports Cato's @DeHavenTad. https://t.co/bSgSrHzecV https://t.co/b4ONZCyf4g
— Cato Institute (@CatoInstitute) October 13, 2026
The article was first published in the Unpopulist on 10/06/2026.
CATO Institute (10/13/2026):
While the government has occasionally taken stakes in private companies, it has generally done so—rightly or wrongly—as a temporary measure to address a perceived emergency. However, never in U.S. history has the executive branch taken ownership stakes in private companies simply because the president wanted his own federal investment portfolio. And this administration has done so without clear legal authority.
As of this writing, the administration has announced deals giving the federal government equity stakes in 34 private companies and counting. Thus, after Trump has spent much of his second term acquiring the means of production, his pitch ahead of the November elections is that he will stop Democrats from … acquiring the means of production?
[snip]
Several reasons help explain the relative lack of attention, let alone resistance, to this potentially monumental expansion of federal power into the economy.
For starters, the pre-2016 GOP is dead. Congressional Republicans could have put an end to the administration’s equity spree at any time. They still can. Up till now, however, the GOP’s response has ranged from feeble “concern” to servile enablement. One can only imagine the outrage and indignation from Republicans if this were occurring under Presidents Obama or Biden. Or “Comrade Kamala.” Republican-friendly media outlets would be in a frenzy, and similarly associated advocacy groups would have launched public campaigns calling on Congress to halt this dangerous threat to American free enterprise.
[snip]
Another issue is that the administration’s deals are intentionally opaque and often complex, the policy rationales are inconsistent, and the legal authority to make any of them is unclear. In short, the administration has been making it up as it goes along. Two weeks after retaking office, Trump issued an executive order instructing his administration to draw up a plan for a sovereign wealth fund. A sovereign wealth fund is a government-owned investment fund that buys stocks and other assets to earn returns, often using budget surpluses or proceeds from natural resources. When the White House discovered that creating one would require Congress and deny Trump sole control, the administration embarked on an improvised solution: create an equity portfolio for the boss in which the government obtains ownership of part of a company in exchange for subsidies to it.
[snip]
Consider the administration’s “golden share” in U.S. Steel that gives Trump veto authority over key business decisions. Last fall, the White House blocked the company’s plan to stop processing steel slabs at its Granite City, Illinois, plant by threatening to use that power. U.S. Steel had explained that shifting the work to other plants would avoid “extensive cost inefficiencies.” One would think that congressional Republicans would at least express some concern about how a President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might use the same authority over an oil company or mine operator to advance her own agenda.
But far from resisting, Republicans are trying to reward the administration’s clear disregard for Congress with after-the-fact legal cover. The House’s Defense Production Act reauthorization bill would put executive branch equity acquisitions on a statutory footing. And the Senate Armed Services Committee’s annual defense bill would expressly authorize the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital to acquire ownership stakes. That’s despite the committee’s own warnings about market distortions and complaints that the Pentagon hasn’t provided the information Congress needs to assess its deals. The GOP is thus moving to supply the authority the administration has claimed to have, which strongly suggests it does not have it.
CATO Institute (10/13/2026):
Narrator: Nothing to see here, right?
That's it for today.
