By now, American consumers realize that contrary to President Biden’s claims, inflation is not transitory. Inflation is continuing apace, and is a stark reality we are going to have to live with in 2022.

Yesterday, news broke that wholesale inflation has reached 9.7%, both surpassing economists’ predictions and considerably higher than the shocking 7.5% consumer price index (CPI) inflation figure that came in only five days earlier.

Underscoring this was the revelation yesterday that import prices rose by 2 percentage points in January, boosting the price of imports by 10.8% in the past year.

Carl Icahn tells Bloomberg the U.S. government “can’t keep printing up money and keep printing it up. The government can’t control inflation.”

History has shown that this kind of knee-jerk response to inflation “ends really badly,” Icahn says.

PNC economist Kurt Rankin tells CNN: “PPI [the Producer Price Index] offers a window to the price pressures businesses are facing, which will likely be inflation passed onto consumers in the months to come.”

The shortage of computer chips, in particular, is seen as one of the key causes of the high inflation currently affecting the United States. So is the $4.5 trillion in COVID relief from the U.S. government, and the Treasury Department’s $120 billion monthly bond-buying program, according to CNBC and The New York Times.

Much More for Meat

Elliot Moscowitz, CEO of kosher meat provider Prairie Street Prime, who is experiencing unusually high inflation in his business, tells Newsmax Finance: “The meat industry is one of the poster boys for surging inflation. Supply chain issues, shortages and strong control by the major meat processors are affecting everyone, down to the consumer level. Most of the big inflationary moves have happened already, and we have raised prices at the minimum level possible.”

Americans are taking notice of higher costs at the supermarket and the gas station, with nearly half of Americans reporting that strained budgets are causing their family hardships, a Gallup survey finds. Since the Biden presidency began, the percentage of Americans listing inflation as the most important problem facing the country has jumped to 8%.

Additionally, most Americans, nearly eight in 10, expect inflation to not only continue in the future, but increase.

One of the ways to stop inflation from increasing and spiraling out of control is for the Fed to raise interest rates. Mike Loewengart, E*Trade’s managing director of investment strategy, believes that an interest rate hike is only a matter of time, telling Yahoo News, “At this point it’s not a question of will they, won’t they – it’s a question of how many hikes we’ll see in 2022, and what the magnitude and pace will be.” Interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve are widely thought to be taking place starting in March, with Goldman Sachs expecting the Fed to raise rates as many as four times in 2022, in a bid to lower inflation.

‘History Not on the Fed’s Side’

In an interview with Newsmax Finance, Greg McBride, chief financial analyst for Bankrate, agrees that rate hikes are coming, and says he hopes the Fed will carefully handle this tinderbox. “The Fed is certainly going to hike rates starting in March and will likely do so repeatedly,” McBride says. “There is a risk in hiking rates and getting aggressive. If the Fed goes too far, the economic recovery could be stunted, or worse, topple the economy into a recession. That will not happen overnight, but history is not on their side.”

McBride agrees with the theory that inflation may not subside in the short term: “Until the supply chain is meaningfully and sustainably healed, we are likely to be dealing with outsized price increases. Prices are going up month after month after month, and even robust wage gains are not keeping pace. Inflation could lead to increased levels of poverty, as the buying power of lower-income households continues to erode.”

Like McBride, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY.) concurs that the working class is being particularly hard hit, saying on the Senate floor on Tuesday, “It’s harder to put dinner on the table when meats, eggs, and fish are 12% more expensive. It’s harder to fill up cars with gas that’s 40% more expensive, and to heat a home with natural gas that’s gone up 24% or fuel oil that’s gone up 47%.

“This is reality for millions of Americans. They’re living it every day. The American people are reporting their lowest consumer sentiment in over a decade. Six in ten say their family’s income isn’t keeping pace with their costs of living. These are not statistics the [Biden] White House can wave away. We are talking about human pain.”