Dear Bureau Of Labor Statistics, About Those Plunging Gasoline Prices…

Tyler Durden's picture

One of the major reasons for yesterday’s market surge to new record highs was the surprise drop and miss in the April wholesale inflation report, or rather make that deflation, when the BLS announced that PPI in April had dropped by 0.4%, far below expectation of a 0.1% increase, of which the BLS said “over 30 percent can be attributed to the index for gasoline, which decreased 4.7 percent.”

The implication, of course, being that with the US drifting ever further from the Fed’s desired 2% inflation threshold, not only is the probability of a June rate hike negligible, but the last time US macro data was this bad, the Fed launched QE2 (and Operation Twist… and QE3).

Which is all great, we just have one question for the BLS: just what “data” are you looking at?

Because a quick reality check reveals April gasoline prices not only did not drop 4.7%, they rose by 8%!

 

… leading to the following grtesque divergence between “data” from the US Department of Truth and, well, the real world.

 

And just to put it in perspective, at this rate in a few weeks gasoline prices in America’s most auto-dependent state, California, will be at or above levels seen from last year. In fact, the surge in California gas prices in 2015 is the fastest on record. As Larry Kudlow would call it “unambiguously bad.

 

So, dear BLS, we are all ears about that explanation.

 

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Bostonbob

Zombie,
Very Funny, perfect.
Bob.

ASIG
ASIG

Here’s a chart of California gas prices over the last 18 months.

http://charts.gasbuddy.com/ch.gaschart?Country=Canada&Crude=f&Period=18&Areas=California,,&Unit=US%20$/G

see the savings — Oops Now their GONE!!!

ASIG
ASIG

http://charts.gasbuddy.com/ch.gaschart?Country=Canada&Crude=f&Period=18&Areas=California,,&Unit=US%20$/G

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