Business: Wholesale Price Explosion

As if to emphasize the gravity of the economic troubles awaiting the attention of the new Ford Administration, the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the very day of Richard Nixon's resignation released a set of statistics that showed inflation to be accelerating at an even more explosive pace than had been supposed. The wholesale price index rose a seasonally adjusted 3.7% in July alone, amounting to a compound annual rate of 54.6%. The jump was the biggest for one month since August 1973, when prices leaped 6.2% after the lifting of the Nixon Administration's second price freeze.

The most ominous trend was...

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