[ThePythonicCow]

So I take it, justshutupandtakeit, you would revise my initial comment thusly:

This article makes a good case fails to make a case that the current low inflation (CPI) reports are false - lies.

Could be. It's still likely in my book, despite the perhaps abundant rhetorical, economical and logical errors of this article, that the feds tend to lean down on the CPI, not up. There are just too many preasures on them that way.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Actually I believe the CPI is not even meaningful. How can one compare say a car today with one of 40 yrs. ago or a tv, stereo system etc. In an economy with little change one could select a basket of goods and use it for comparison for decades or centuries but in one where change is rapid and almost instantaneous choosing such a basket is almost impossible.

From my shopping I find that there are only a few items with clear price increases such as butter and bacon. So I never buy either anymore unless on sale.

If you use the price of gold to gauge inflation then there has been a severe deflation since 1980, oil not that much of a change, silver deflation. Since inflation is a general rise in the price level not just a few products I tend to disbelieve claims of great inflation.

Actually, there are other means of determining the existence of deflation/inflation which would be outside the control of federal authorities. Should there be too great a gap between the claimed CPI and the real one private authorities would quickly be heard. There are even international bodies such as the IMF, World Bank, among others which provide alternative financial data. So there won't likely be too great a divergence.