Latest Inflation Stories
NEW YORK, April 27, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis today reported 2.2 percent growth in real gross domestic product for the first quarter of 2012. Following a strong performance at the end of 2011, this most recent growth rate may be called modest, at best. Still, there are signs of strengthening in the underlying dynamics of the economy. The Conference Board Leading Economic Index(®) for the United States signals sustained moderate growth in the...
NEW YORK, April 26, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The Great Recession has confronted U.S. workers with an extended buyer's market in jobs, according to a new Executive Action Report from The Conference Board, leading to overall wage growth between 2008 and 2010 that was the weakest since the 1960s. Feeling the Pain: Wage Growth in the United States examines prevailing trends in recent U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, and finds workers and wages still reeling from the downtown, with...
ANN ARBOR, Mich., April 19, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The annual cost of healthcare for individuals with employer-sponsored health insurance rose 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011 versus the fourth quarter of 2010 and 0.8 percent versus the third quarter of 2011, according to the Thomson Reuters Healthcare Spending Index for Private Insurance. The index, which measures historical and current levels of per capita healthcare spending for people with employer-sponsored coverage,...
CHESTER, England, April 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- - Basic rate taxpayers need a rate of 4.38 per cent to gain benefit in real terms, increasing to 5.83 per cent for higher rate taxpayers - 'Life in Limbo' Brits need the cost of living to reduce to get their plans back on track Today's announcement by The Bank of England that inflation (CPI) has risen for the first time in six months to 3.5 per cent, from 3.4 per cent last month,...
TORONTO, April 12, 2012 /PRNewswire/ - The C.D. Howe Institute's Monetary Policy Council (MPC) today recommended that the Bank of Canada maintain its target for the overnight rate, the very short-term interest rate the Bank targets for monetary policy purposes, at 1.00 percent at its next announcement on April 17, 2012. While most members in the group felt that strength in domestic demand and growing household debt warranted increases in the overnight rate over time, the MPC's...
Annual Survey Released During InterTraffic Finds Daily Downtown Parking Rates Begin to Rebound WASHINGTON, March 29, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The National Parking Association (NPA) today released the results of its fourth annual Parking in America survey report. The study measures monthly, daily and hourly rates in cities throughout the United States and Canada, including parking facilities in hospitals, hotels, educational institutions and airports. It also documents...
LONDON, March 20, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Throughout January, February and March the main energy providers have announced price decreases following last year's price hikes*. However, most consumers are failing to check price comparison websites to see if they can make savings and are still paying high tariffs, according to comparethemarket.com, one of the leading comparison websites. Last autumn saw unprecedented energy price rises, with households receiving up to a 19%...
TORONTO, March 6, 2012 /PRNewswire/ - The C.D. Howe Institute's Monetary Policy Council (MPC) today recommended that the Bank of Canada maintain its target for the overnight rate, the very short-term interest rate the Bank targets for monetary policy purposes, at 1.00 percent at its next announcement on March 8, 2012. Tension between concerns about inflation running above target domestically and fear of adverse events abroad led the group, on balance, to recommend that the...
BEIJING, Feb. 23, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The Conference Board Leading Economic Index®( )(LEI) for China increased 1.6 percent in January to 225.7 (2004 = 100), following a 0.8 percent increase in December and a 0.5 percent increase in November. Five of the six components contributed positively to the index in January. "The January uptick in the LEI for China raised the six month growth rate slightly, but the trend remains slower than the first half of 2011 and equal numbers of its...
ANN ARBOR, Mich., Feb. 6, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The cost of healthcare for individuals with employer-sponsored health insurance rose 4.0 percent in the third quarter of 2011 versus the third quarter of 2010 and 0.9 percent versus the second quarter of 2011, according to the Thomson Reuters Healthcare Spending Index for Private Insurance. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20090507/NY12658LOGO ) The index, which measures historical and current levels of per capita...
Latest Inflation Reference Libraries
Quintessence (Dark Energy) -- Quintessence or dark energy is a hypothetical form of energy postulated to exist in order to explain observations of an accelerating universe. This energy would act like a vacuum pressure, pushing things apart. Other attempts to explain these recent observations involve a non-zero cosmological constant, which has the same effect. Indeed, sometimes quintessence is said to result in a non-zero cosmological constant, and conversely a non-zero cosmological...
Cosmological Constant -- The cosmological constant (usually denoted by the Greek capital letter lambda: Λ) is a value occurring in Einstein's theory of general relativity. The units of Λ are 1/second2; its value is unknown but believed to be positive based on recent observations. The constant is proportional to the energy density of the vacuum Ï, where Ï€ is Pi, G is the gravitational constant and c is the speed of light in vacuum. The term can be postive, negative, or...
Inflation -- Inflation is the idea - first proposed by Alan Guth (1981) - that the nascent universe passed through a phase of exponential expansion that was driven by a negative vacuum energy density (positive vacuum pressure). This expansion can be modelled by a non-zero cosmological constant. As a direct consequence of this expansion, all of the observable universe is posited to have originated in a small, initially causally-connected region. Quantum fluctuations in this microscopic...
Accelerating universe -- In the late 1990s, observations of type I supernova produced the unexpected result that the expansion of the universe appears to be accelerating. These observations appear more firm as new data has appeared. This means that the speed with which a distant galaxy recedes from us increases over time. If this trend continues, eventually we won't be able to see any other galaxies any more. This new theory of the end of the Universe has been called the Big Rip....
Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) -- The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) was launched on June 30, 2001 at 3:46 p.m. EDT at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, USA. The goal of WMAP was to map out minute differences in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation which would help test theories of the nature of the universe. On February 11, 2003, the public relations group from NASA made a press release regarding the age and composition of the universe....
