U.S. consumer prices rose 5.7% over the past year, the fastest pace in 39 years.
WASHINGTON -- U.S. consumer prices rose 5.7% over the past year, the fastest pace in 39 years, as a surge in inflation confronts Americans with the holiday shopping season under way.
“Consumers spent with less enthusiasm in November as they shifted their holiday shopping to earlier in the season and continued to contend with escalating prices and reduced product availability,” said Kathy Bostjancic, chief U.S. financial economist at Oxford Economics. While the CPI is the better known price gauge, the Federal Reserve prefers to follow the Commerce Department's personal consumption expenditures price index in setting its interest-rate policies to fight inflation. The PCE price index tracks the actual purchases consumers are making each month while the CPI follows a fixed market basket of goods.
Republicans contend that the sizable gains in inflation are evidence that President Joe Biden’s economic policies are not working and are actually harming Americans whose incomes are not keeping up with rising prices. The Federal Reserve last week announced that it was accelerating the pace of change to fighting inflation pressures with an expectation that it could raise interest rates next year by possibly three times to slow growth and keep inflation from getting out of hand.
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