Matt Eagen News Today

Thats considerably down from october and november when inflation was up .8 and .9% respectively. one reason why it came down in december, why the rate of inflation was slower in december is because energy prices actually fell after growing 6% in october and november. they actually fell half a percent in december. >> okay. matt eagen joins us now. give us your take. >> well, clearly the cost of living is going up. in some cases, pretty dramatically. consumer prices up by 7% from a year ago. the b...

Cautiously optimistic that in the comes months, inflation may peak. maybe this winter or spring. but the better question might be where does inflation land once it peaks? because if price gains continue to be elevated well above the feds 2% target, that is going to be a real problem for the economy and remember, as much we talk about the white house, its the feds job to maintain price stability and prices are ending up stable. so the question is whether or not the fed can fight inflation without...

Federal reserve just raised interest rates for the first time since 2018. the quarter of a percent increase increase marks the end of the feds near zero rates seen during the height of the pandemic. >> lets join matt eagen and catherine pell. >> we know inflation is on fire and the good news is as of 2:00 p.m. today, the firefighters has arrived on the scene to try to put this blaze out. the bad news though is that it feels like theyre pretty late. inflation has been really hot for a while now a...

Seen oil prices go up, sorry, come down by more than 20%, yet gasoline prices have actually gone up a little bit. now energy experts ive talked to say thats going to change. we should see the national average come down 20, 25 cents a gallon, but its going to take some time. i think the fact that the president is tweeting about sort of the intricacies of how energy markets work really says a lot about how closely they are following gas prices. how much frustration they have with this energy issue...

Ultra low. very expansionary. this is not going to make a big dent on inflation or economic activity, but the real question is how does the fed respond in the months ahead particularly given these enormous shocks weve seen because of the russian ukraine war and because of a lot of lockdowns in china. >> matt, can we talk about oil and gas prices? price of oil coming down. gas prices not as quickly. the president wants to see those gas prices come down. is there some correlation? or is it just no...

Matt, why are these russian tankers going dark. >> they call it dark activity. it sounds like the title of a not so great spy thriller, but what were seeing is that tankers are supposed to keep their transponders on. the exception would be if theyre going through pirate infested waters, but theres been this uptick of tankers, russian affiliated tankers, that have actually turned them off for eight hours at a stretch. you can see it on the chart right there. theres been this increase in recent we...

A Helena artist is repairing an 80-year-old mural at the Fort Harrison Service club.

A Helena artist is repairing an 80-year-old mural at the Fort Harrison Service club.

Thanksgiving. they have rebounded so that calls into question how long this relief is going to last. we also have to talk about whats happening in natural gas because weve seen more of a decline there. down 40% in the last two months. that is very good news because natural gas is the most popular way to heat homes in america and this plunge is largely due to the fact that temperatures across the united states have been warmer than usual. so that has translated to less demand. of course, natural ...

Seeing a large number of cases probably over what happened at thanksgiving. for example, mask up, wear high quality mask when youre in crowded, indoor settings. get rapid tests and if youre going to see vulnerable relatives, make sure youre testing at events. make these common sense changes that will protect you from delta and omicron as well. >> yeah, the delta variant obviously the major threat, the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths here in the united states in recent days has been ...