More Obama Hope & Change: Wholesale Prices Up 1.6% … Biggest Jump in Food Costs in 36 Years

Barack Obama, the new Jimmy Carter and welcome to America’s misery index …

No wonder Barack Obama is playing golf  and filling out NCAA College Basketball brackets, wholesale prices up 1.6% as food prices rose 3.9% last month, the biggest gain since November 1974. We have an economy that continually is in the dumper, and unemployment rate that is understated from what it really is, gas prices on the rise and a national debt that continues to grow out of control. And the hits keep on coming for Barack Obama.

Wholesale prices jumped last month by the most in nearly two years due to higher energy costs and the steepest rise in food prices in 36 years. Excluding those volatile categories, inflation was tame.

The Labor Department said Wednesday that the Producer Price Index rose a seasonally adjusted 1.6 percent in February — double the 0.8 percent rise in the previous month. Outside of food and energy costs, the core index ticked up 0.2 percent, less than January’s 0.5 percent rise.

Food prices soared 3.9 percent last month, the biggest gain since November 1974.

Then comes the unbelievable, the complete disconnect from real Americans and reality. In an effort to tell folks that not all prices have increased, New York Fed President William Dudley is reminded that  … ‘I Can’t Eat an iPad’.

The former Goldman Sachs chief economist gave a speech explaining the economy’s progress and the Fed’s successes, but come question time the main thing the crowd wanted to know was why they’re paying so much more for food and gas. Keep in mind the Fed doesn’t think food and gas prices matter to its policy calculations because they aren’t part of “core” inflation.

So Mr. Dudley tried to explain that other prices are falling. “Today you can buy an iPad 2 that costs the same as an iPad 1 that is twice as powerful,” he said. “You have to look at the prices of all things.”

Reuters reports that this “prompted guffaws and widespread murmuring from the audience,” with someone quipping, “I can’t eat an iPad.” Another attendee asked, “When was the last time, sir, that you went grocery shopping?”