the caucuses seven years ago plus, themarkets get a break as cooling inflation sparks a much needed rally on wall street. but what about main street what does the latest report tell us about the cost of food and clothes and electricity? we ll break it all down for you. and forecasters in california warning that a new round of rainstorms may bring large scale and long lasting flooding up to eight more inches of rain falling on areas yet to recover from last week s storm as the totals reached levels not seen in decades all this as the northeast sees its first real snow of the season, less than a week before the official start of spring we have a lot going on we ll have all of it for you in just a minute. but we start with donald trump unveiling his strategy for presidential run number three, fully embodying the combative, insulting and misleading campaign style that made him president. but that we had seen very little of in recent months.
can the fed do both at the same time, keep raising rates to attack inflation without making these what are safe securities, fixed income securities, less attractive to potential buyers? i think there s the feeling the fed is going to go more slowly. this is the delicate balancing act of the fed right now. the next meeting is march 22nd. we have this big cpi report that s coming today. and the feeling is, look, the chances of no rate hike has risen dramatically since this banking drama. now a lot of people are thinking it will be more like 25 bases points. just a week ago the fed chair was preparing us for 50 bases points. what i keep hearing is all of this is disinflationary. this is in a weird way not what the fed designed but working towards the fed s goal of cooling inflation. why? there are skeptics of that argument? there are. if they re going to slow lending, right if you ll have this fro thi part of the market,
gone, but it is cooling off. 6.5% increase in consumer prices over the last six months is not good, but it is triple what is considered healthy, but everything is relative. as you can see on the chart, the trend is going in the right direction, and this is eight straight months of cooling inflation, and this is the smallest increase in consumer prices in 17 months, and all signs of progress. if you are looking and digging into the report, you can see that some things are still getting much more expensive. groceries up by 10% from a year ago and natural gas, pet food, airfare, all of them increasing. the question of course is what does the fed do. so even heading into this month, they face the impossible question of getting the fed under control without breaking something in the real economy or the financial markets, and now we are learning that something does appear to have broken and that is the situation in the