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Well, so that's the backdrop that we have here. We're going to have Jeffrey Gundlach with us. He's the CEO, CIO, and founder of DoubleLine. He does join us now. Welcome back. It's good to have you as always. All right, good to see you, Judge. I'm in New York, and you're in California. We got it backwards this time.
I know we certainly did, but at least we're talking. That's the most important thing for our viewers. What's your reaction? Well, I thought the press conference was kind of devoid of content. There were a lot of questions that were asked and not answers given. But he's once again, the chairman emphasized that everything's fine with employment.
And he reiterated that the speed of the inflation the CPI the inflation statistics are not coming down with sufficient speed. If I were on the committee, I actually would have dissented today. I noticed that in your halftime show that there were a lot of people playing word games with like, you know, the old one-and-done, and then Steve Liesman said one-and-mum.
I actually would have dissented and voted to raise rates 50 basis points today. And I would have called that stun and done. And give the market a little bit more of a trueing up with the Fed funds rate. The two-year Treasury going in the meeting was more than 100 basis points above the Fed funds rate, and the two-year Treasury rate has risen today in reaction to the the one the one hike.
I I think that one of the real problems is that the true inflation, and I use import-export prices, is what I call true inflation because there's no seasonal adjustments, there's there's no uh uh adjustments for quality and other things that are kind of artificially uh uh estimated. Import-export prices, they're just really prices.
And if you average import-export prices, which just came out recently, the average is 7.8% which is which is pretty high. And also getting to something that's more standard, the the PCE is at 3.3 on the core rate. And for the 14 years before COVID, 2.6 or 2.7 was the high on the core PCE. The 2.6 was the low on the core PCE.
Ever since it bottomed out at 2.6, it's now trending higher at 3.3. And so I I I I just also think that one of the things that he he he did mention correctly that the economy looks stronger if you look at GDP now over the past few weeks, but the real reason for that is inventories. And I heard a story yesterday that kind of set a light bulb off.
And that is that Costco doubled their price for their Kirkland motor oil. And when when they doubled the price, I think that they feared or perhaps anticipated that when the price doubled, you might get hoarding. You know, when prices go up, people think maybe they're going to go up again. When you double the price of the Kirkland oil, people might think, "Gee, I noticed oil is above $100 a barrel.
Maybe it'll double again." And they might want to go and grab, you know, a year's worth of motor oil and so they're rationing it out. That's a phenomenon that I remember from the '80s and the late '70s where people start to say, "I think prices are going to go up." And so they want to buy now. And when you look at the GDP now, the inventory increase is really what is has pushed GDP now up in recent weeks.
And I wonder if stores broadly retailers broadly aren't thinking, "Hey, you know, I think prices are going higher. I noticed commodities. I mean, our commodity fund is up our ETF is up 48% year-to-date, and we all know that oil is up tremendously. And so, many people are thinking, I think prices When you get this What I'm saying, Judge, is when you get a psychology that inflation is now trending higher, which is clearly the case on the PCE and on import-export prices, I worry that the inflation problem is not being fully respected, and Kevin Warsh really focused in the press conference on the fact that inflation is not falling fast enough, and it's still too high.
It's been too high for too long. And I I would have just done the 50 and then see what the data does. And so, I was I'm not surprised that the markets weakened over the course of the press conference because I thought the content was pretty thin.
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