Creative Commons photo from Flickr/Matt MacGillivray

BY KELLEN M. HENRY — MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

Consumer prices in the Chicago area rose 0.6 percent last month, riding on an increase in the price of gasoline in June, while other price areas remained stagnant, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Wednesday.

The [...]

The federal cigarette excise tax increase passed under the Obama administration earlier this year led to a steep tobacco price increase in April. Will consumers opt to continue to pay the extra dollar and one cent to support their habit? How will the tax hike affect government revenues? Robert Johnson of Morningstar Inc. [...]

BY BENJAMIN MIRASKI, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

The Federal Reserve has released the minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee meeting that took place on August 5. The thing about the FOMC minutes is that they normally don’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.

At its policy-setting meetings, the [...]

BY HOLLY FOX, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

It’s not looking good.

The Producer Price Index for Finished Goods, which measures inflation from the perspective of the seller, moved up 1.2 percent in July, boosting the increase over the last twelve months to 9.8 percent. This makes it ever more likely that [...]

BY BENJAMIN MIRASKI, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

The Hershey Company [[HSY]] announced today that it will raise prices on its instant consumable, multi-pack and packaged candy lines by 11 percent.

This is nothing new in the food industry. Companies have been raising prices to keep pace with commodity price inflation [...]

BY BENJAMIN MIRASKI, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

The markets had the total opposite reaction than we expected at Medill Money Mavens given all of the bad news at the beginning of the day, when, tongue-in-cheek, we suggested this day might just [...]

BY BENJAMIN MIRASKI, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

Bad news seems to be the only news of the day today, unless you work for WalMart. A bad jobs number, housing foreclosures are up and then there is inflation.

The Consumer Price Index was up 0.8 percent in July, [...]

BY BENJAMIN MIRASKI, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

The Federal Open Market Committee has spoken and the target Federal Funds rate will remain at 2 percent for now.

Yet, it seems that the Fed is going to get tougher on inflation going forward. While Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Fed, was the only one to [...]

As inflation motors on, can your portfolio keep pace?
by Patrick Temple-West
May 13, 200

Chicago-area investors are looking to shift their portfolios into higher gear—with greater risk—to keep pace with rising inflation.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average are in the red [...]

BY PATRICK TEMPLE-WEST-MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

Inflation in the Chicago area has increased at a faster rate than the rest of the nation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics release this morning.