Financial Daily Dose 10.14.2021 | Top Story: CPI Jumps More than 5%, Raising Fears of Stubborn Inflation

In unsurprising news to regular Daily Dose readers, consumer prices jumped 5.4% in September as compared to a year before, with “food, rent and furniture costs surging as a limited supply of housing and a shortage of goods tied to supply chain troubles combined to fuel rapid inflation.” The gain—which exceeded an already high August figure—suggests that U.S. inflation may be less transitory than originally hoped - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg

The Biden Administration is taking executive action aimed at “untangl[ing] supply chains and clear[ing] disruptions that have threatened the holiday shopping season.” The efforts so far are focused on turning the bottlenecked Port of Los Angeles into a 24/7 operation - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch

Fed September meeting minutes that dropped yesterday show that the central bank has been mulling over the effects of both these stubbornly high inflation figures and supply-chain woes on its plans for easing the monetary support it’s been pumping into the economy for nearly 19 months - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg

NHiTSA, the top U.S. federal auto safety regulator, has issued two letters to Tesla this week “raising questions about the company’s driver-assistance software systems and instructing the carmaker to provider fuller information.” Specifically, NHiTSA wants an explanation for why Tesla didn’t issue a recall last month when it “updated software called Autopilot to improve its ability to spot stopped emergency vehicles such as police cars and fire trucks” - NYTimes and WSJ

The good news? Facebook taking quick action in the wake of the whistleblower Frances Haugen’s revelations about the social media giant. The bad news? That action—restricting staff access to internal discussion boards—is aimed at preventing future Frances Haugens and not at addressing the internal rot she exposed - WSJ

Speaking of the ‘Book, big GDPR news out of Ireland this week, where the country’s Data Protection Commissioner has opined in a draft ruling that the company “does not need to get consent to process European users’ data if the users agree to terms of service.” The Commissioner did recommend that Facebook pay a $32 to $42 million fine for “not clearly communicating to its users that it was not asking for their consent as a legal basis for collecting their personal data under the GDPR,” but that figure pales in comparison to the potential penalty for a GDPR violation, prompting European privacy activist Max Schrems to pan the decision as against the intent of the EU law – Law360

Union workers at a dozen John Deere plants mostly in Iowa and Illinois are the latest group to hit the picket lines after the latest company contract offer didn’t do enough to increase wages or improve an “overly stingy” incentive program and denied a “traditional pension to new employees” - NYTimes and MarketWatch

A Harvard/Robert Wood Johnson Foundation/NPR poll released this week delivered the sobering news that almost 20% of U.S. households lost all of their savings during the pandemic, with that figure rising to 30% for respondents making less than $50k/year - Bloomberg

October: not just for pumpkin spice anymore. Oh no. It’s all about the Szns - NYTimes

Stay safe, and get vaxxed,

MDR