A new Labor Department report shows the consumer price index rose 7% in December, the fastest increase in four decades. Gasoline costs rose 49.6% on average, and used car prices are up 37.3%. The inflation surge will likely put pressure on the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates. Seema Shah, chief strategist at Principal Global Investors said, “it’s the highest annual CPI number since 1982 and driven not by energy prices, but by just about everything else.”
