The twenty-gun HMS Buffalo departed Quebec on September 28, 1839, bound for Australia. Commanded by James Wood, the transport carried 150 crewmembers and 140 exiled passengers: fifty-eight French Canadians and eighty-two American Patriots; the voyage ensured the Upper and Lower Canadian rebellions of 1837–38 were over.
In a presentation last month, St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank president James Bullard remarked, “The current U.S. macroeconomic situation is straining the Fed’s credibility with respect to its inflation target.” It’s easy to understand why this might be the case. Statistics revealed that the annual inflation rate has shot to 9.1 percent, the highest since November 1981, while the month-over-month measure of the Consumer Price Index surged to an astounding 1.3 percent, the highest since March 1980.
Fed officials like Jerome Powell have long downplayed CPI as a price inflation measure in favor of the PCE index. But, much like CPI, the PCE measure is now also hitting 40-year highs. In new data released today for June, the personal consumption expenditures price index rose 6.8%, the biggest 12-month move since the 6.9% increase in January 1982. Excluding food and energy, the ”core PCE” increased 4.8% from a year ago, up one-tenth of a percentage point from May.
After narrowly failing to make it through the California Assembly last year, AB 257 has been put back on the Sacramento agenda this year. Backers—unions and their Democrat operatives—think they can succeed this time. Now crunch time for that hypothesis is approaching, as the bill passed the state senate’s Labor, Public Employment and Retirement Committee in June and is scheduled to be considered by the California Senate Appropriations Committee on August 11, then voted on soon thereafter.
