New Jersey’s quirky reputation is hard earned, but one peculiarity stands out: It’s the only place in America where you can’t pump your own gas. Laws against self-service gasoline used to be common: In the late 1960s, nearly half the states in the U.S. had one. But as fuel dispensers became safer and credit cards […]
Fed likely to stay the course on interest rate hike as inflation ticks up but gas prices ease
The Federal Reserve received mixed news in the latest data on U.S. inflation as it mulls another rate hike. Consumer prices rose 8.3% in August from a year earlier, data released on Sept. 13, 2022, shows. While this pace is down from the 8.5% annual gain experienced in July, it’s still higher than what some […]
Inflation report is a mixed bag – an economist explains why some items are rising faster than others
Economists worried about soaring inflation got some good news to start the year: The rate of inflation has eased. The first report card of 2023 on consumer prices, released on Jan. 12, showed that the overall cost of goods and services decelerated to an annual pace of 6.5% in December, the slowest in over a […]