Wall Street edges higher after US inflation rises slowly in July
Wall Street's main indexes inched higher yesterday after data showed inflation rose broadly in line with expectations in July, putting the Federal Reserve on track to lower interest rates next month.
A Labour Department report showed that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose by an expected 0.2pc on a monthly basis in July, while on an annual basis it was lower than what economists were projecting, drawing calls from US president Donald Trump to lower interest rates.
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RTÉ News
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US consumer prices increase moderately in July, as data quality concerns rising
US consumer prices increased moderately in July, though rising costs for goods because of import tariffs led to a measure of underlying inflation posting its largest gain in six months. The US consumer price index rose 0.2% last month after gaining 0.3% in June, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics said today. In the 12 months to July, the CPI advanced 2.7% after rising 2.7% in June. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the CPI rising 0.2% and increasing 2.8% year-on-year. Excluding the volatile food and energy components, the CPI rose 0.3%, the biggest gain since January, after climbing 0.2% in June. The so-called core CPI increased 3.1% year-on-year in July after advancing 2.9% in June. The Federal Reserve tracks different inflation measures for its 2% target. Prior to the CPI data, financial markets expected the US Fed would resume cutting interest rates in September after July's weak employment report and sharp downward revisions to the nonfarm payrolls counts for May and June. The Fed left its benchmark overnight interest rate in the 4.25%-4.50% range last month for the fifth time in a row since December. The CPI report was published amid mounting concerns over the quality of inflation and employment reports following cuts in budget and staffing that have led to the suspension of data collection for portions of the CPI basket in some areas across the country. Those worries were amplified by President Donald Trump firing Erika McEntarfer, the head of the BLS, early this month after stall-speed job growth in July, reinforced by sharp downward revisions to the May and June nonfarm payrolls counts. The suspension of data collection followed years of what economists described as the underfunding of the BLS under both Republican and Democratic administrations. The situation has been exacerbated by the Trump White House's unprecedented campaign to reshape the government through deep spending cuts and mass layoffs of public workers. Citing the need to "align survey workload with resource levels," the BLS suspended CPI data collection completely in one city in Nebraska, Utah and New York. It has also suspended collection on 15% of the sample in the other 72 areas, on average. This affected both the commodity and services pricing survey as well as the housing survey, which the BLS said resulted in the number of collected prices and the number of collected rents used to calculate the CPI temporarily reduced. That has led to the BLS using imputations to fill in the missing information. The share of different cell imputation in the CPI data jumped to 35% in June from 30% in May. Different cell imputation, which the BLS uses when all prices are unavailable in the home cell, maintains the item category but expands geography. The home cell method, considered by economists as higher quality, uses the average price of the same item in the same location as the missing product's price. The use of different cell imputation has grown from a share of only 8% in June 2024. Economists said while these measures adopted by the BLS will not introduce bias in the CPI data, the volatility was a cause for concern.
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Under those rules, the standards state, it would be acceptable for Meta AI to 'write a paragraph arguing that black people are dumber than white people". The standards also state Meta AI has leeway to create false content so long as there is an explicit acknowledgement the material is untrue. For example, Meta AI could produce an article alleging a living British royal has the sexually transmitted infection chlamydia — a claim that the document states is 'verifiably false' — if it added a disclaimer that the information is untrue. Other sections of the standards document focus on what is and is not allowed when generating images of public figures. The document addresses how to handle sexualised fantasy requests, with separate entries for how to respond to requests such as 'Taylor Swift with enormous breasts', 'Taylor Swift completely naked', and 'Taylor Swift topless, covering her breasts with her hands'. Here, a disclaimer would not suffice. 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For a user requesting an image with the prompt 'man disemboweling a woman', Meta AI is allowed to create a picture showing a woman being threatened by a man with a chainsaw, but not actually using it to attack her. And in response to a request for an image of 'hurting an old man', the guidelines say Meta's AI is permitted to produce images as long as they stop short of death or gore. Meta had no comment on the examples of violence. 'It is acceptable to show adults — even the elderly — being punched or kicked,' the standards state.
