Here’s what we have for you today:
• Update on the Feds
• High on eggs
• All along Exxon knew
Why Are Eggs Sky-High?
Get egged: In a report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that tracks food price outlook, eggs have risen up to 59% in December 2022, the highest year over year rise in prices among food items.
Feeling the pian: The main reason egg prices remain high is the spread of an avian influenza virus which started in early 2022 and has already affected more birds than the 2015 outbreak, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Premium eggs: In December 2022, when egg demand was at an all-time high due to the beginning of the holiday season- and with inflation still high- the median price for a dozen eggs across the country was at $4.25, more than twice the year before at $1.78, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Expectations for the Fed to downsize future rate hikes goes up
Expectations: Signs of further cooling in inflation in December 2022 spurred bullish expectations that the Federal Reserve will reduce the size of its upcoming interest-rate hikes.
The numbers: The final CPI report for 2022 showed December headline inflation fell 0.1% month over month, meeting the consensus estimate from a Bloomberg survey of economists. The headline rate of 6.5% year over year was lower than 7.1% in November.
Core CPI that excludes energy and food prices rose 0.3%, meeting expectations but it was slightly higher than 0.2% in November 2022.
Exxon made accurate climate predictions during the 1970s to 1980s
The intention: The oil giant Exxon privately “predicted global warming correctly and skilfully” only to then spend decades publicly trashing such science in order to protect its core business, new research has found.
Behind the curtain: A new study, however, has made clear that Exxon’s scientists were unsettlingly accurate in their projections from the 1970s onwards, predicting an upward curve of global temperatures and carbon dioxide emissions that is close to matching what actually occurred as the world heated up at a pace not seen in millions of years.
The truth: The analysis found that Exxon correctly rejected the idea the world was headed for an imminent ice age, which was a possibility brought up in the 1970s, instead predicting that the planet was facing a “carbon dioxide induced ‘super-interglacial’”. Company scientists also found that global heating was human-influenced and would be detected around the year 2000, and they predicted the “carbon budget” for holding the warming below 2C above pre-industrial times.