Diegetics

I see that detractors of the Obama administration are taking the shotgun approach with regards to their predictions of doom: blame every possible current event for a future catastrophe (in this case, inflation, which I've been told since the Spengler forum days is just a year away for the last 3 years). Maybe eventually one of these predictions will come true.

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What will happen in US, already in process, everything imported, will become more and more expensive .. at the same time, American income will sink .. result will be, American buying power will go lower and lower .. meaning people will less and less afford to buy anything imported, retail will sink, real estate will sink

Oil rare comodity .. China and India need more and more oil .. America must cut dramaticaly per capita oil consumption, meaning suborbia will die .. big changes ahead, no ifs and buts

FED must pop up Stock market .. Corporate America must retool and needs lots of cash for R&D for new products and venture .. corporate America must recapitalize, sell new shares, need high share prices

But the tribe ruling the hedge funds would not let go, siphoning money out of the system

As said B4, Wall Street is a TAX on Americans ..


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When housing is 40% of CPI and the real estate market is in the toilet, that covers a multitude of inflation in other areas. Good thing we don't need to buy food and fuel often, but we're always buying housing.

Yeah, that was kind of my point. I was just sort of shocked by the numbers based on what you say about housing being 40% of the CPI. I didn't know that. If you're right, then the numbers are even more stark than I realized.

Sure wish someone like Alph would explain to us how the Consumer Price Index makes sense.


I've seen the pie charts. A couple of years ago the NYT did an article about it which left me absolutely disgusted with the way it is computed, but maybe I need a Ph.D. in mathematics to understand this.

Right now, to me, until I get that Ph.D., it looks like the biggest joke since the War on Drugs.






[edited to suggest that the word "joke" might more appropriately be replaced with "fraud"]

I didn't want to get into it when Az mentioned it because it gets down to defining what " is" is. But if you measure inflation by " does stuff cost more " , then yes , there is inflation. Particularly now , like unemployment stats , the numbers are carefully picked.

Most egregious is the phenomenon of tip inflation. It used to be 15% but now people think you're stingy if you don't leave 20%. Frankly speaking, it should be 0%.

To say the CPI is not "truth" strikes me as more than a bit weird, as if there were "true" barometers of the economy. Economics is interesting and theoretically, may even be useful, but there is very little objective truth within the discipline. It's not the fault of economists or politicians, but simply the nature of the beast. Now if only we could get more people to abandon their equally silly faith in the free market, maybe we could finally make some progress.

Thanks Alph, That helped, I think. Next time I start to complain about rising prices, I'll make sure to remember that we live in the best of all possible worlds, at least until we improve it.

Crap , so it works just fine until it doesn't and then nobody is really sure what to do until it works again. Would someone please cue the invisible hand of the market.

Always great to see you Alph.

human trends (fashion and emotion based) create patterns that people can rely on until the trend stops, then their is much thrashing around until new patterns form and you can exploit those until they stop.

not like its a rule of nature, just a rough guide to the averages of the past, until the "now" is sufficiently different to the "then"

its why governments are so scary in my country at the moment, they consider these rough rules of thumb based on previous trends as gospel.

the invisible hand of the market was never a concept about being a perfect thing that didnt stuff up, it was a concept of the market fixing the stuffup quicker than a central government can, but none of the anti capitalists want to hear that nuance, they want this absurd world that agrees with them and never stuffs up.

Except of course that the "invisible hand" has been shown time and time again to be much slower and less efficient than centralized government for certain tasks. Why is blind faith in the invisible hand an exception to your rule?