Inflation increased in November, complicating Fed’s next rate decision
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(WASHINGTON) — Consumer prices rose 2.7% in November compared to a year ago, ticking upward from the previous month and potentially giving pause to the Federal Reserve as it weighs an interest rate cut expected next week. The reading matched economists’ expectations.
The fresh data marked two consecutive months of rising inflation, extending a bout of accelerated price increases that has reversed some of the progress made in lowering inflation earlier in the year.
The inflation gauge makes up the last piece of significant economic data before the Fed announces its next interest rate decision on Dec. 18. A finding of accelerated price hikes may give the Fed pause as it weighs interest rate cuts.
The inflation gauge makes up the last piece of significant economic data before the Fed announces its next interest rate decision on Dec. 18.
Core inflation — a closely watched measure that strips out volatile food and energy prices — increased 3.3% over the year ending in November, matching the previous month, the data showed.
Food prices rose 2.4% in November compared to a year ago, matching the previous month and marking slower price increases than the overall inflation rate.
Prices fell in November compared to a year ago for an array of household staples like cereal, rice, flour, bread, bacon and seafood.
Over that period, the price of eggs soared more than 37%, however, as a result of an avian flu that has depleted supply. Prices for sugar, butter and pork chops also rose faster than the overall inflation rate.
Inflation has slowed dramatically from a peak of more than 9% in June 2022, but price increases remain slightly above the target rate of 2%.
In recent months, the Fed has cut its benchmark rate three quarters of a percentage point, dialing back its yearslong fight against inflation and delivering relief for borrowers saddled with high costs.
The Fed is expected to cut interest rates by another quarter of a percentage point at its meeting next week, according to the CME FedWatch Tool, a measure of market sentiment.
Over time, rate cuts ease the burden on borrowers for everything from home mortgages to credit cards to cars, making it cheaper to get a loan or refinance one. The cuts also boost company valuations, potentially helping fuel returns for stockholders.
In theory, the policy eases access to funds, stimulates economic activity and boosts demand. But the promise of bolstered consumer strength risks increased prices.
Speaking at a press conference in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell voiced optimism about the prospects for achieving a “soft landing,” in which the U.S. averts a recession while inflation returns to normal.
“We continue to be confident that with an appropriate recalibration of our policy stance, strength in the economy and labor market can be maintained with inflation moving sustainably down to 2%,” Powell said.
The trajectory of inflation could shift in the coming months. Some economists expect President-elect Donald Trump’s proposals of heightened tariffs and the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants to raise consumer prices.
When asked about the Fed’s potential response to Trump’s policies, Powell said the central bank would make its rate decisions based on how any policy changes impact the economy.
“In the near term, the election will have no effects on our policy decisions,” Powell said. “We don’t know what the timing and substance of any policy changes will be. We therefore don’t know what the effects on the economy will be.”
“We don’t guess, we don’t speculate and we don’t assume,” Powell added.
(NEW YORK) — If you are nearing retirement, you will soon be able to stash even more money into your nest egg — if you can afford it.
The Internal Revenue Service announced that the maximum amount individuals can contribute to their 401(k) or similar plans in 2025 will increase to $23,500, up from $23,000 for 2024.
The federal government already lets those 50 and older make extra contributions so that they can save more as they near retirement age. This is known as a “catch-up” contribution.
In 2025, the standard catch-up contribution will stay the same, with a max of $7,500, according to the IRS.
But starting next year, workers ages 60 to 63 will be able to make “super” catch-up contributions, up to $11,250 annually, which is an additional $3,750.
That means they can potentially contribute up to $34,750 in total, each year, to a workplace retirement account.
The substantially higher catch-up contributions are part of SECURE 2.0, which President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022 as part of a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending package.
“While anything that encourages more investing is generally a good thing, I’m afraid this rule change probably won’t make a big impact, ” Bankrate’s Senior Industry Analyst Ted Rossman, told ABC News. “There has to be a very small population between the ages of 60 and 63 who were maxing out their accounts and can now go higher.”
In 2023, just 14% of retirement plan participants maxed out their 401(k) limits, according to Vanguard Research.
Even those who have always maxed out their retirement savings contributions may need to reallocate funds as they age and start to face extra expenses, like sending children to college or caring for aging parents.
Aside from 401(k) plans and similar employee-sponsored plans, the limit on annual Individual Retirement Account contributions is unchanged next year, at $7,000, while the catch-up contribution for people 50 and older will remain $1,000.
Those limits apply to both traditional IRAs, which may offer a tax deduction depending on income, and to Roth IRAs, which don’t come with a tax deduction but do offer tax-free growth and withdrawals in retirement.
An aging population, coupled with fewer companies offering pensions, means that a smaller portion of the population overall is prepared for retirement.
The typical household headed by someone ages 55 to 64 has just $10,000 saved in a retirement account, according to an analysis of federal data by the Economic Policy Institute and the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis.
“Not to discourage investing at any age, but there’s a reason why Einstein said compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world,” Rossman said. “Investing is more powerful when you’re young.”
Still, catch-up contributions can be a valuable way to grow your retirement fund and enjoy the tax benefits.
Rossman said it’s also important to contribute regularly to your 401(k) and gradually increase your contributions. He suggested putting reminders in your calendar to increase your 401(k) contribution every year.
“The idea is that you’re less likely to miss the extra money if you do it gradually or if you do it in tandem with a pay raise,” Rossman said.
For instance, he said, if you’re currently contributing 5% of your salary, could you bump that up to 6% or 7% next year?
“Gradually dialing up your percentage makes it more likely that you’ll stick with the approach,” Rossman added, “and you won’t diminish your standard of living.”
This undeveloped property in Randolph, New Jersey, was sold in December 2023, but the owners did not place the land on the market. (Jared Kofsky/ABC News)
(NEW YORK) — When a man claiming to own a vacant Randolph, New Jersey, investment property called real estate agent Lisa Shaw last summer, she thought it would be the start of another typical real estate transaction in the Garden State suburbs.
“He said he had this piece of property for over 25 years in Randolph, even though he had never been to Randolph,” Shaw told ABC News.
She said she asked the man why he wanted to put this land on the market.
“He said, ‘Well, real estate is really high right now.’ He thought he could get the best dollar for it,” Shaw said. “He also told me his wife was ill and he needed the proceeds from that money for his wife’s illness.”
Shaw says she did not realize that not only did the man on the phone not actually own the property in question — but that this one phone call would ultimately connect that vacant lot to an alleged international crime web that authorities say involves fake documents ranging from Canada to Vietnam.
The incident is just the latest example of what the FBI says is a growing and troubling new form of fraud affecting unsuspecting landowners nationwide.
“Who would ever think that somebody would sell your own property from right under your nose, without your knowledge, and be able to dupe the system and everyone involved in that transaction?” Jim Dennehy, assistant director in charge of the FBI for New York, told ABC News Chief Business Correspondent Rebecca Jarvis.
‘No one suspected it’
Shaw, who has been selling properties in and around Randolph for more than two decades, says that after she spoke with the purported property owner, she asked him for documentation.
The man said that he and his wife were Canadian citizens living in England, and he provided a British address and copies of what appeared to be their driver’s licenses from the Canadian province of Ontario.
What Shaw didn’t know was that the property in Randolph was actually owned by a husband and wife from Texas. When the driver’s licenses arrived, they had the names of the real owners — just not their Texas address.
“Everything looked fine,” Shaw said, explaining that she proceeded to put the land up for sale and immediately received around 10 offers.
But the licenses turned out not to be fine. An official with Canada’s Peel Regional Police told ABC News that both identification cards were fake.
Although the licenses contained real addresses in the Toronto area, the owner of the home at one of those addresses told ABC News that she has no idea how her address ended up being listed on the fake identification card, and that she had nothing to do with an attempted property sale in New Jersey. The owner of the home at the British address, an attorney, said the same thing — but he suspected that scammers could have found his home address in England because he used to own property in Florida.
Back when the property in Randolph was getting ready to be sold, Shaw says no one involved detected that this was a scam.
“No one suspected it, not the attorneys, not myself, not the title company,” she said.
When the supposed property owner asked Shaw about the offers that had come in, Shaw said she told him that the highest one was for $140,000, and that he told her to immediately accept the offer.
Sale documents were soon prepared and the man provided paperwork that purportedly showed he had gotten the deed notarized at the U.S. embassy in Vietnam.
In December, the deal closed — all while the real property owners had no clue that the transaction had taken place. The supposed seller asked for the $140,000 payment to be split in half and sent to two different banks, according to Shaw.
But the title company encountered trouble while attempting to submit the second $70,000 payment.
“That set off the red flag,” explained Shaw, who said that the title company was then able to get in touch with the son of the real owners. “We knew it was definitely identity fraud.”
But by that point, it was too late. Shaw said that the initial $70,000 payment had already gone through, and the supposed seller had disappeared.
The buyer that paid $70,000 to the fraudulent seller is still listed in municipal and county tax records as the property’s new owner — but since the original owners did not authorize the sale, it remains unclear what will happen to the land now.
“It was a real shock to find out that people were devious [enough] to do this kind of thing,” Shaw said.
‘A lot of litigation’
ABC News has learned that the FBI is now investigating the alleged scammers who fraudulently sold the lot in Randolph — though the owners of the British and Canadian homes that were used as fake addresses said they have not yet been contacted by American law enforcement authorities. The FBI would not confirm or deny details of the investigation.
Dennehy, who was previously FBI Newark’s Special Agent in Charge, is urging owners of vacant land to remain vigilant and check their property records, as the bureau has reported a 500% increase in vacant land fraud over the last four years.
“It all comes down to due diligence on behalf of the buyer, the real estate agent, the title companies and beyond,” Dennehy said, explaining that scam artists pretend to be real landowners by using publicly accessible property information.
Dennehy cited another New Jersey case in which a property owner found out that her land was fraudulently sold when the new owner showed up with construction equipment.
The FBI is encouraging real estate agents and property owners who suspect fraud to contact authorities before money changes hands.
“It’s probably going to be a whole lot of litigation for many, many months and years to come, if that money is already gone,” Dennehy said. “Technically you’re no longer the owner of the property, so now it has to get into civil lawsuits, a lot of lawyers [with] a lot of litigation involved in order to try to reclaim what’s yours to begin with.”
‘Vacant land is very easy to steal’
As a result of these scams, real estate industry groups in parts of the country with large swaths of vacant land are issuing urgent warnings to their members.
“Vacant land is very easy to steal because not everybody is going to be checking up on a vacant piece of property once a month,” Emily Bowden, executive officer of the Sussex County Association of REALTORS in New Jersey, told ABC News. “Not everyone who owns that land necessarily lives in our area.”
Bowden said real estate agents should try to meet with sellers in person whenever possible, make sure that their mailing addresses line up, and assess how well sellers actually know the lay of the land that they are seeking to put on the market.
A desire to sell a vacant lot as quickly as possible can be suspicious, Bowden said, adding that real estate agents who do not do their due diligence when representing fraudulent sellers could face lawsuits.
Derek Doernbach, who sells properties on the Jersey Shore, says he was contacted by three purported sellers who he believes were actually scammers. He said that, as a result of his suspicions, he declined to list any of the three properties.
According to Doernbach, all of the supposed sellers sent him Canadian driver’s licenses containing the exact same picture and address as the license that was presented to Shaw by the alleged scammer in the Randolph case.
“Without a doubt, this has to be the same people, or it’s just a ring on the dark web that is circulating the same driver’s license around,” Doernbach said.
A year after she was first contacted by the alleged Randolph scammer, Shaw says she wants to make sure other real estate agents remain on the lookout.
“If you have a piece of property that someone wants to sell and it’s vacant property, really, really get your feelers up on that one because there could be a potential fraud,” she said. “It’s a very easy way that they’re doing this, and it’s successful. And nobody knows until after the fact.”
(WASHINGTON) — Albertsons has filed a lawsuit against its rival Kroger following a failed multibillion dollar deal that would have marked the biggest supermarket merger in U.S. history.
Two federal judges in Oregon and Washington blocked the merger Tuesday, siding with the Federal Trade Commission, which has opposed the plan, arguing it would eliminate competition and raise prices for American shoppers.
Albertsons announced Wednesday that it had terminated the merger agreement following the failed bid.
“Given the recent federal and state court decisions to block our proposed merger with Kroger, we have made the difficult decision to terminate the merger agreement,” Albertsons CEO Vivek Sankaran said in a statement. “We are deeply disappointed in the courts’ decisions.”
Less than 24 hours after the failed deal, the Boise, Idaho-based retailer also announced it had taken legal action against Kroger.
“Kroger willfully breached the Merger Agreement in several key ways, including by repeatedly refusing to divest assets necessary for antitrust approval, ignoring regulators’ feedback, rejecting stronger divestiture buyers and failing to cooperate with Albertsons,” the company alleged in a statement Wednesday.
Albertsons claimed the Cincinnati, Ohio-based grocery chain failed to exercise “best efforts” and failed to take “‘any and all actions’ to secure regulatory approval of the companies’ agreed merger transaction as was required of Kroger under the terms of the merger agreement between the parties.”
The complaint was filed in the Delaware Court of Chancery against Kroger and is temporarily under seal.
In response to the lawsuit, Kroger released its own statement, calling the suit “baseless.”
“Kroger refutes these allegations in the strongest possible terms, especially in light of Albertsons’ repeated intentional material breaches and interference throughout the merger process, which we will prove in court,” the company claimed. “This is clearly an attempt to deflect responsibility following Kroger’s written notification of Albertsons’ multiple breaches of the agreement, and to seek payment of the merger’s break fee, to which they are not entitled.”
Kroger said the company “looks forward to responding to these baseless claims in court.”
Tom Moriarty, Albertsons’ general counsel and chief policy officer, expressed his disappointment and said the merger “would have delivered meaningful benefits for America’s consumers,” as well as both companies’ employees.
“Rather than fulfill its contractual obligations to ensure that the merger succeeded, Kroger acted in its own financial self-interest, repeatedly providing insufficient divestiture proposals that ignored regulators’ concerns,” Moriarty claimed in a statement. “Kroger’s self-serving conduct, taken at the expense of Albertsons and the agreed transaction, has harmed Albertsons’ shareholders, associates and consumers.”
The two supermarket chains first proposed combining forces back in October 2022, sharing a definitive agreement in which Kroger, the second largest U.S. grocery store chain, sought to purchase the fourth largest, Albertsons, for an estimated total enterprise value of $24.6 billion.
Following a three-week hearing in Portland, Oregon, U.S. District Court Judge Adrienne Nelson issued a temporary injunction blocking the merger on Tuesday.
That was followed later on Tuesday by a decision from Judge Marshall Ferguson in Seattle, Washington, who issued a permanent injunction that barred the merger in that state, citing competition concerns and a violation of Washington’s consumer-protection laws.
Kroger operates 2,800 stores across 35 states, with brands including Ralphs, Smith’s and Harris Teeter. Albertsons operates 2,273 stores in 34 states, including brands like Safeway, Jewel Osco and Shaw’s.
Between them, the two grocery chains have more than 700,000 workers and operate almost everywhere in the U.S.
In separate statements following Tuesday’s court rulings, both Kroger and Albertsons expressed disappointment and said at the time, they would review their options.
Both the White House and the FTC praised the rulings Tuesday.
“The FTC, along with our state partners, scored a major victory for the American people, successfully blocking Kroger’s acquisition of Albertsons,” Bureau of Competition Director Henry Liu said in a statement. “This historic win protects millions of Americans across the country from higher prices for essential groceries — from milk, to bread, to eggs — ultimately allowing consumers to keep more money in their pockets.”
White House National Economic Council Deputy Director Jon Donenberg said in a separate statement Tuesday, “The Kroger-Albertsons merger would have been the biggest supermarket merger in history — raising grocery prices for consumers and lowering wages for workers. Our administration is proud to stand up against big corporate mergers that increase prices, undermine workers, and hurt small businesses.”
