{"id":10753,"date":"2015-08-05T06:39:29","date_gmt":"2015-08-05T11:39:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10753"},"modified":"2015-08-05T06:39:29","modified_gmt":"2015-08-05T11:39:29","slug":"i-sure-am-glad-theres-no-inflation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10753","title":{"rendered":"I Sure Am Glad There’s No Inflation"},"content":{"rendered":"

I Sure Am Glad There’s No Inflation<\/a><\/h3>\n

<\/i>I sure am glad there’s no inflation, because these “stable prices” the Federal Reserve keeps jaw-jacking about are putting us in a world of hurt.<\/i><\/p>\n

We are constantly bombarded with two messages about inflation:<\/b><\/p>\n

1. Inflation is near-zero<\/p>\n

2. This worries the Federal Reserve terribly, because stable prices are\u00a0deflationary<\/i>and deflation is (for reasons that are never explained) like the financial Black Plague that will wipe out humanity if it isn’t vanquished by a healthy dose of inflation (i.e. getting less for your money).<\/p>\n

Those of us outside the inner circles of power are glad there’s no inflation, because we’d rather get\u00a0more for our money<\/i>\u00a0(deflation) rather than\u00a0less for our money<\/i>\u00a0(inflation).<\/b>\u00a0You know what I mean: the package that once held 16 ounces now only holds 13 ounces. A medication that once cost $79 now costs $79,000. (This is a much slighter exaggeration than you might imagine.)<\/p>\n

Our excellent F-18 Super Hornet fighter aircraft cost us taxpayers $54 million a piece. Now the replacement fighter, the wallowing collection of defective parts\u00a0flying in close proximity<\/i>\u00a0known as the F-35 costs $250 million each–unless you want an engine in it. That’ll cost you extra, partner.<\/p>\n

Despite all these widely known examples of rampant inflation, every month we’re told there’s no inflation.<\/b>\u00a0Just to reassure myself there’s no inflation, I looked up a few charts on the St. Louis Fed’s FRED database.<\/p>\n

I have to say, I’m scratching my head here because the cost of things has gone up a lot since 2000.<\/b><\/p>\n

The consumer price index is up 38% from 2000.<\/b>\u00a0Now if somebody were to give me a choice between getting 10 gallons of gasoline and 10 gallons minus 3.8 gallons of gasoline, I’d take the 10 gallons. So how the heck can a 38% increase be near-zero inflation?<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I Sure Am Glad There’s No Inflation I sure am glad there’s no inflation, because these “stable prices” the Federal Reserve keeps jaw-jacking about are putting us in a world of hurt. We are constantly bombarded with two messages about inflation: 1. Inflation is near-zero 2. This worries the Federal Reserve terribly, because stable prices […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[127,1055,2026,172,202,303,305,426,536,4924],"class_list":["post-10753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-charles-hugh-smith","tag-consumer-price-index","tag-consumer-prices","tag-cpi","tag-deflation","tag-fed","tag-federal-reserve","tag-inflation","tag-money","tag-oftwominds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10753"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10754,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10753\/revisions\/10754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}