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Consumer prices jumped more than expected last month, with rent, food and furniture costs surging as a limited supply of housing and a shortage of goods stemming from supply chain troubles combined to fuel rapid inflation, the New York Times reported. The Consumer Price Index climbed 5.4 percent in September from a year earlier, faster than its 5.3 percent increase through August and above economists’ forecasts. Monthly price gains also exceeded predictions, with the index rising 0.4 percent from August to September. The figures raise the stakes for both the Federal Reserve and the White House, which are facing a longer period of rapid inflation than they had expected and may soon come under pressure to act to ensure the price gains don’t become a permanent fixture. On Wednesday, President Biden said his administration was doing what it could to fix supply-chain problems that have helped to produce shortages, long delivery times and rapid price increases for food, televisions, automobiles and other products. In remarks at the White House, Mr. Biden said that the Port of Los Angeles would begin operating around the clock to relieve growing backlogs and that the administration was encouraging states to license truck drivers more quickly. Companies including Walmart, FedEx and UPS are also moving to work more off-peak hours, he said. Monthly price gains have slowed from their breakneck pace earlier this year — they popped as much as 0.9 percent this summer — but they remain abnormally rapid. Tangled shipping routes have helped to push couch and table prices higher, and consumers are paying more for everyday items like meat, eggs and gasoline.

President Joe Biden is pushing to ease supply shortages and tame rising prices in time for Christmas, but unsnarling U.S. supply lines could take far longer, experts told Reuters. Biden brought together powerbrokers from ports, unions and big business on Wednesday to address shipping, labor and warehousing pain in the U.S. supply chain, and announced new around-the-clock port operations in Los Angeles. As his Republican opposition seizes on possible Christmas shortages to connect Biden's economic policies to inflation, and try to stall a multitrillion-dollar spending bill in Congress in coming weeks, the White House's message Wednesday was that a solution is in sight. "This is an across-the-board commitment to going to 24/7," said Biden. The port opening, and a promise from retailers like Target and Walmart to move more goods at night are a "big first step," he said. Now, he said, "we need the rest of the private sector chain to step us as well." While more cooperation among the often competing, secretive players in the U.S. supply chain business is a plus, the White House's impact may be incremental at best, logistics experts, economists and labor unions warned. "What the president's doing isn't going to really hurt. But at the end of the day, it doesn't solve the problem," said Steven Ricchiuto, U.S. chief economist at Mizuho Securities. Players from ports to retail chains are already working full-tilt to handle the pandemic-fueled surge in imports and get holiday gifts onto shelves and e-commerce centers in time for the Nov. 26 Black Friday kickoff of the 2021 holiday season. Imports at the Port of Los Angeles — the No. 1 gateway for ocean trade with China — are up 30% so far this year over last year's record. But that has left some 250,000 containers of goods stacked up on the docks due to delayed pickups, from chassis shortages and a lack of space in rail yards and warehouses. And that is causing dozens of ships to back up at anchor outside the port.

The White House on Wednesday is expected to announce a pledge from one of the country’s busiest ports to operate around the clock, a move aimed at easing cargo bottlenecks that have led to goods shortages and higher consumer costs, the Wall Street Journal reported. By going to 24/7, the Port of Los Angeles will join the neighboring Port of Long Beach, Calif., which started doing the same thing last month. Major ports in Asia and Europe have operated around the clock for years. Expanded operations at the Port of Los Angeles, which declined to comment ahead of the announcement, would nearly double the hours that cargo can move, according to the White House. It said the extra shifts have been agreed to by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which represents dock workers. The American supply chain has struggled to adapt to a crush of imports as consumers shifted from services to home goods, including electronics, and as businesses rush to restock pandemic-depleted inventories. Tens of thousands of containers are stuck at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, the West Coast gateways that move more than a quarter of all American imports. Dozens of ships are lined up to dock, with waiting times stretching to three weeks.

A Rhode Island man was sentenced Tuesday to almost seven years in prison for fraudulently seeking more than $4.7 million in forgivable federal loans meant for businesses struggling during the coronavirus pandemic while he was still on probation from a previous conviction, federal prosecutors said, the Associated Press reported. Michael Moller filed 11 fraudulent applications for Paycheck Protection Program loans, federal prosecutors said in an emailed statement. He used his own name, as well as the names of his father, his girlfriend’s brother, and his girlfriend’s son to apply for the loans to pay employees at businesses that did not exist, authorities said. He actually received almost $600,000, some of which he used for a trip to Las Vegas, home renovations, and a car, prosecutors said. He was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Providence to five years and 10 months for the loan scam, and another year for violating the terms of his release on a federal bank robbery conviction. He was also ordered to pay full restitution. Moller also has multiple convictions in state and federal courts for larceny and tax fraud, authorities said.

The International Monetary Fund is slightly downgrading its outlook for the global recovery from the pandemic recession, reflecting the persistence of supply chain disruptions in industrialized countries and deadly disparities in vaccination rates between rich and poor nations, the Associated Press reported. In its latest World Economic Outlook being released yesterday, the IMF foresees global growth this year of 5.9%, compared with its projection in July of 6%. “The global recovery continues but the momentum is hobbled by the pandemic,” IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath told reporters at a briefing. For the United Sates, the world’s largest economy, the IMF predicts growth of 6% for 2021, below its July forecast of 7%. The downward revision reflects a slowdown in economic activity resulting from a rise in COVID-19 cases and delayed production caused by supply shortages and a resulting acceleration of inflation.

Grupo Aeromexico SAB sees emerging from chapter 11 by the end of this year with an exit plan worth about $1.7 billion, Bloomberg News reported. The airline, which filed for bankruptcy protection in June 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic brought travel to a halt, filed a motion late Thursday to extend the period to issue a complete plan to Dec. 9. The step was taken “out of an abundance of caution” as it seeks to resolve pending matters. Aeromexico is “working fervently to resolve outstanding issues,” the airline said in a filing to the court, some of which relate to its fleet. The carrier filed a plan on Oct. 1 that includes $1.2 billion in new equity and up to $537.5 million in new debt. The debt will be used to pay in full the $1 billion debtor-in-possession loan led by Apollo Global Management Inc. except for those creditors who chose to convert their loans into equity. The plan estimates the company is worth $5.4 billion. Aeromexico says it received three exit financing proposals, which included one from Apollo. During mediation, the other two proposals from groups of creditors were combined into a single proposal that will deliver “the greatest value,” the airline said.

From the very start of the Paycheck Protection Program last year, it was clear that minority entrepreneurs, especially Black business owners, struggled more than white borrowers to find a willing lender. A new research project indicates that the problem was particularly pronounced at smaller banks — and human bias appears to be the main reason, the New York Times reported. The majority of Black borrowers who received aid from the $800 billion relief program got their loan from a financial technology company, not a bank, according to an economic working paper released yesterday. The skew toward those so-called fintechs was far sharper among Black borrowers than any other racial group. It turned out that the automated loan vetting and processing systems used by the fintechs, as well as some of the nation’s biggest banks, significantly improved approval rates for Black borrowers, the researchers found. They didn’t find such stark gaps for any other racial group they examined, including Asian and Hispanic applicants. The findings come amid growing scrutiny of how algorithmic systems can inadvertently perpetuate biases. Regulators like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are examining whether lenders using such systems run afoul — even inadvertently — of fair-lending laws. A trade group for small banks, the Independent Community Bankers of America, defended its members, saying community lenders “outperformed the rest of the banking industry in serving minority-owned, women-owned and veteran-owned businesses.”