• Trump claims inflation is "defeated" despite consumer prices remaining 2.9% above the Federal Reserve's 2% target • Federal Reserve acknowledges inflation reduction but warns of continued economic challenges • Tariffs and interest rate cuts add complexity to the current economic landscape • Experts caution against premature declarations of economic victory

Monetary policymakers now cannot stop talking about food inflation.

Exposes the Black economic empowerment myth. BEE failure fueled corruption & inequality, not mass prosperity. South Africa needs real inclusive growth.

WalletHub ranked US cities by changes in inflation over the past month and year. Tampa was ranked as having the worst inflation problem in the country. The Fed's interest rate cut might influence how inflation continues to rise.

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The U.S. jobs market has stalled over the summer, which the commerce secretary believes is just a blip.

Noam Chomsky used to say something along the lines of "if you want to know the truth, read the business press because their readers need to know what’s going on." He would certainly be interested to hear what the McDonald's CEO said last week on CNBC. It was a remarkably candid conversation from a company that surely has deep insights into consumer behaviour in the US and around the world. CEO Chris Kempczinski talked about tghe "Particularly, with middle- and lower-income consumers, they’re feeling under a lot of pressure right now. I think there is a lot of commentary about what’s the state of the economy, how is it doing and what we see is it’s really kind of a two-tier economy," Kempczinski said. "If you are upper-income, earning over $100,000, things are good. Stock markets are near all-time highs, you are feeling quite confident about things, you are seeing international travel – all those barometers of upper-income consumers are doing quite well. What we see with middle and lower-income consumers is actually a different story," Traffic for lower-income customers are down double digits he said, noting that people are skipping breakfast. "It’s that consumer is under a lot of pressure in our industry, traffic for lower-income consumers is down double digits, and it’s because people are either choosing to skip a meal – we are seeing breakfast, people are actually skipping breakfast – or they are choosing to just eat at home," Kempczinski said. He added that the wealthy consumer isn't feeling it at all and that they're not trading down. In terms of the revenue side, he said that franchisees were probably 10% off all-time cashflow highs. That's some remarkably good insight that is certainly actionable as an investor. You want to stay away from businesses that are sensitive to the low-and-middle income cohort right now and gravitate to the high end. That starts with luxury brands but extends to travel, premium travel, business flying and companies with pricing power. You can try to bar-bell that with dollar stores but I think that's risky given the potential cuts to entitlements and food stamps. This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.

Trump's trade wars have created an atmosphere of economic anxiety.