{"id":57938,"date":"2021-05-19T06:21:53","date_gmt":"2021-05-19T11:21:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=57938"},"modified":"2021-05-19T06:21:53","modified_gmt":"2021-05-19T11:21:53","slug":"monetary-inflations-game-of-hide-and-seek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=57938","title":{"rendered":"Monetary Inflation&#8217;s Game of Hide-and-Seek"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"wrapper entry-header page-header\">\n<div class=\"title-with-sep single-title\">\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cobdencentre.org\/2021\/05\/monetary-inflations-game-of-hide-and-seek\/\">MONETARY INFLATION\u2019S GAME OF HIDE-AND-SEEK<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-media\">The May 12, 2021, press release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bls.gov\/news.release\/pdf\/cpi.pdf\">Consumer Price Index<\/a>\u00a0(CPI) for the month of April sent the stock markets tumbling for two days and generated fodder for the news pundits with the announcement that the CPI measure of the cost-of-living had increased 4.2 percent at an annualized rate, or nearly 62 percent higher than in March when the annualized rate was 2.6 percent. The era of relatively low rate of price inflation was feared to be ending.<\/div>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<div class=\"grids\">\n<div class=\"grid-8 column-1\">\n<div class=\"single-box clearfix entry-content\">\n<p>For almost a decade, despite significant increases in the money supply, CPI-measured price inflation remained \u201ctame.\u201d Between March 2011 and March 2021, the M-2 money supply (cash, checking accounts, and small savings) went from $8.94 trillion to $19.9 trillion, or a 222.5 percent increase. Just in 2020, M-2 expanded by nearly 25 percent.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, despite this, the CPI only went up by a little less than 20 percent, from 223 to 266.8 (100 = 1982-1984) between 2011 and 2021. The annual rates of CPI price inflation for this ten-year period were mostly less than 2 percent. What is called \u201ccore\u201d price inflation \u2013 the CPI minus energy and food prices \u2013 averaged each one of these ten years a bit higher most of the time, but not by much in this period. (See my article,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aier.org\/article\/dangerous-monetary-manipulations-and-fiscal-follies\/\">\u201cDangerous Monetary Manipulations and Fiscal Follies\u201d<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>But what, exactly, does the Consumer Price Index tell us? All price indexes, including the CPI, are statistical constructions created by economists and statisticians that, in fact, have very little to do with the actions and decisions of consumers and producers in the everyday affairs of market demand and supply. And they are certainly not accurate and precise guides for central bank monetary policy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Overall versus \u201cCore\u201d Price Inflation<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MONETARY INFLATION\u2019S GAME OF HIDE-AND-SEEK The May 12, 2021, press release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting on the Consumer Price Index\u00a0(CPI) for the month of April sent the stock markets tumbling for two days and generated fodder for the news pundits with the announcement that the CPI measure of the cost-of-living had increased [&hellip;]<\/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":[124,7380,1055,26558,172,426,1304,534,538,13351],"class_list":["post-57938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-central-banks","tag-cobden-centre","tag-consumer-price-index","tag-cost-of-living-2","tag-cpi","tag-inflation","tag-monetary-inflation","tag-monetary-policy","tag-money-printing","tag-price-inflation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57938","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=57938"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57939,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57938\/revisions\/57939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}