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Wages and Prices: Who Is Keeping Up With What?

Dean Baker Center for Economic and Policy Research
Since President Biden took office, the media have run a constant stream of news stories about how high various prices were and telling their audiences that this has led to mass suffering.

The Fed Should Pause Interest Rate Rises as US Inflation Slows

Joseph Stiglitz and Dean Baker The Guardian
It would be irresponsible to create much higher unemployment – and the US economy could be pushed into recession. There is a strong argument for the Fed to take a break from its aggressive monetary-policy tightening.

Time To Blow Up Electricity Markets

Yanis Varoufakis Project Syndicate
The European Union’s power sector is an example of what market fundamentalism has done to electricity networks. With the end of cheap natural gas, retail consumers and businesses are paying the price for their governments’ embrace of a shoddy theory.

Inflation Dos and Don’ts

Joseph E. Stiglitz , Dean Baker Project Syndicate
Today’s inflation is driven largely by supply-side constraints, which call for supply-side solutions. Such measures would do as much to tame higher prices as limited increases in interest rates would, and they would not come at the expense of American workers and the broader economy.

The February CPI: More Bad News on Inflation

Dean Baker CEPR
Should Jerome Powell put on his Paul Volcker outfit and push interest rates through the roof? I would argue that, while modest rate hikes are appropriate, it is too soon to bring out the heavy artillery.

Fighting the Inflation Profiteers

David Dayen The American Prospect
Companies are raising prices well above increases in their costs. The only antidote is to finally take action against corporate power.

Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever

Matt Taibbi Rolling Stone
Conspiracy theorists of the world, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. A series of related corruption stories spilling out of the financial sector, suggests the world's largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything. Moreover, it's increasingly clear that both the criminal justice system and the civil courts may be impotent to stop them, even when they do get caught working together to game the system.
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