Southern California Gas Co. and Pacific Gas & Electric began warning customers in January that they would see higher bills after the wholesale price of natural gas hit record highs. But reality didn't sink in for many customers until their bills started arriving later in the month.
SoCalGas said the average bill in January for its 21.8 million customers was about $300, more than twice the average of January 2022 — and homeowners with pools or many rooms to heat have reported being charged north of $2,000. PG&E has projected that bills in central and Northern California will be 32% higher this winter.
The annual inflation rate in the US slowed only slightly to 6.4% in January of 2023 from 6.5% in December, less than market forecasts of 6.2%. Still, it is the lowest reading since October of 2021.
A slowdown was seen in food prices (10.1% vs 10.4%) while cost of used cars and trucks continued to decline (-11.6% vs -8.8%). In contrast, the cost of shelter increased faster (7.9% vs 7.5%) as well as energy (8.7% vs 7.3%), with gasoline prices rising 1.5%, reversing from a 1.5% decline in December. On the other hand, both fuel oil (27.7% vs 41.5%) and electricity prices slowed (11.9% vs 14.3%). Although inflation has shown signs of peaking at 9.1% in June last year, it remains more than three times above the Fed's 2% target and continues to point to a broad-based advance on the general price level, particularly services and housing. Compared to December, the CPI rose 0.5%, the most in three months, mostly due to the higher cost of shelter, food, gasoline, and natural gas.
At this rate it will take until 2026 to reach the Fed's 2% target which indicates a much longer trend of tightened monetary policy.
@irishmolly72 Good thing the cute little bastard’s a vegetarian. A couple pounds of stew meat and he would have needed more than $100 for that bag of groceries. 🤨
They didn't want to have a financial crisis during covid, so now we have an inflationary crisis. The most laughable thing was how they called it transitionary in the beginning, even though it had little to do with supply/demand bottlenecks, but mainly with their excessive money printing.
We are headed straight for a recession. Layoffs have already begun in many, many major corporations...so if we think those numbers, above, are scary, imagine paying those prices on unemployment...OR AFTER YOUR UNEMPLOYMENT RUNS OUT.
@4meAndyou I'm not sure we aren't in a recession. We had two consecutive quarters of negative GDP and the White House started fiddling with the definition of recession. There are massive layoffs going on in tech, especially with the H-1B visas. Food, gasoline, utilities have skyrocketed 2-3 fold since Biden took office. This 6.4% inflation is 🐂💩
This model is showing up globally, plus or minus a few local items like eggs in the US.. Local events like Avian flu, or floods effecting ground crops and the like, are reinforced by labor shortages and high energy costs globally. And there we are back at covid and the Ukraine...😷
@whowasthatmaskedman I’m really hoping they can get their hands around this for everyone’s sake but I think people hoping for a soft landing and quick turn around are going to be disappointed. Everything seems to be pointing to recession this year. Assuming everyone can agree on the definition again.
@RuyLopez I hope they will get this inflation under control as well, for the good of all. But be careful what you wish for. The only real lever central banks have over the economy is interest rates. They keep bumping them up until demand drops. Demand dropping means business falling away and that means unemployment and financial hardship. (Particularly if a nation has just spent up big on a housing boom or has a lot ot credit card debt on the books) There is be a lot of tears before bed time, among those least able to afford it. (as usual)😷.
