Posted on 01/29/2011 6:30:05 AM PST by Erik Latranyi
A surprising number of people on Wall Street will tell you not to worry too much about inflation.
After all, they'll say, just look at the numbers. The inflation picture is incredibly benign. In the past 12 months the Consumer Price Index has risen just 1.5%—a remarkably low rate. And when you strip out volatile food and energy costs, they'll say, it's even lower—a meager 0.8%.
It doesn't stop there. Many economists will point out that wages are also rising by less than 2% a year. With so many people still out of work, goes the line, labor costs are going to stay low for a long time too. So what's the worry?
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Inflation is more than evident to all of us who live in the real world. Groceries and fuel are the two daily reminders. The economists can report that the economy is improving because of increased consumer spending - not by choice for most consumers. When the buying power of the dollar is diminished, what is the obvious result?
If anyone believes the absurd reports generated by the government, I’ve got a bridge for sale. The method of calculation for everything from unemployment, inflation, GDP, and manufacturing activity have been tweaked so many times that they no longer report reality - all in the name of achieving the desired pie in the sky numbers to feed the talking heads in the MSM. Unfortunately, most of the population lack the capability to recognize this fact and adjust accordingly.
“The US is at serious risk of losing it’s status of the world’s reserve currency.
We need to dramatically cut spending to levels that will cause pain and discomfort to all. We need to start taking some of our lumps now or be bludgeoned to death later.”
Well spoken. When the world stops accepting dollars, our economy will have a crisis. We are not too big to fail. External forces are plotting now to replace the dollar. We only have limited time to change. I am pessimistic about the political will to change. Democrats have no intentions about reducing government spending except for the military. They want to tax the rich to fund their social spending. Democrats will not admit that entitlement programs are bankrupt. The baby boom generation has paid large amounts of payroll taxes so they will not accept reductions in entitlement benefits. Government employees have influenced legislators to enact elaborate legal protections for their bloated benefits.
Yep, the economic level of the Great Depression maybe a further reach, but the backward movement of the Carter years is here—and that Carter-era standard of living lurks menacingly.
The part about “Hedonics” is very interesting, it explains how if a computer costs the same as it did a year or more ago but has more features or more capacity etc. they say that it has fallen in price. This keeps the inflation figures down. What really happens in too many cases is simply that a person is forced to pay for a lot of stuff they don’t really want or need. Washing machines with so many cycles that you have to read and study the manual to figure out how to use the one or two out of eight that you really need. Cell phones that are a mystery to those of us who just want to be able to make or receive calls and don’t need a qwerty keyboard, a video camera etc. I have a microwave that has so many buttons on it that I have to put on reading glasses to see how to operate it. In a lot of cases these things would be worth more to most of us if they DIDN’T have all the unwanted features.
Now that my memory is not as good as it used to be if I don’t use something every day I soon forget how to use it and sometimes need to have a refresher course before I can use it again. It wouldn’t be so annoying except that mostly I am trying to figure out how to avoid setting off something that I never wanted in the first place.
Right, if they hadn’t changed the calculation a person really COULD live on social security, in fact many of us would be doing better on that kind of SS than most full time working people are doing now.
WTF....0bamanomics is a bullet train to bankruptcy.
Yes. It is called "lean manufacturing."
In Oregon, with some of the highest chronic unemployment in the country, communist Peter DeFazio (D) got some government make work jobs for his buddies at OMEP...
Look it up...
Are salaries up 10% a year like they were in the 70's?
Commodity prices are up due to government meddling in the economy, not inflation. There isn't any genuine inflation yet. There is deflation, which the government has been willing to spend trillions of tax dollars the American citizen hasn't even earned yet to try to stave off. Because deflation wipes out the indebted, including the powerful and politically connected.
In a truly free market these commodity-based price spikes in food wouldn't be happening, but nothing except trillions in spending to fake growth can stop the natural post-bubble deflation of housing prices, salaries, and securities back to the historical trend line.
I’ve taught myself how to use iTunes to load up my iPod — twice. Currently, I have no idea how to use iTunes to load up my iPod, and I don’t have any inclination to teach myself a third time.
Yet.
The bankers loot the country and we "all" must pay.
You have to quit a lot more than that! You have to stop heating or cooling your house, turn off the lights, cook on a fire outside using twigs that fall on the ground. Stop using a refrigerator or freezer, it goes on and on, all that takes energy you know. In reality you couldn’t even walk to the grocery store and buy food because it takes energy to get the food to the store but all that is already priced into the cost of groceries which are of course barely rising at all according to our minister of propaganda.
Don’t forget now, cold showers only.
The stock market is in limbo, should it go up purely because of the inflation that the government insists isn’t happening or should it go down in response to the actual GREATER DEPRESSION that the government isists isn’t happening?
The stock market is in limbo, should it go up purely because of the inflation that the government insists isn’t happening or should it go down in response to the actual GREATER DEPRESSION that the government insists isn’t happening?
Me too! And, I go to the gas station and I know that "zero inflation" is bunk.
Makes you wonder - has the growth in the DOW (until the last couple of days, that is) shown an increase in percieved value of the corporations that make up the index, or are we seeing devaluation of the dollar instead.
It's the main stream media and government that are misleading the unwashed masses.
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