Posted on 05/16/2013 6:30:35 AM PDT by blam
Economists Continue To Get The Biggest Economic Story Of The Year Wrong
Sam Ro
May 16, 2013, 8:41 AM
Minutes ago, we got the April reading of consumer prices.
Not only did the numbers reflect a complete absence of inflation, they also showed that economists continue to overestimate inflation.
Headline CPI fell by 0.4% which was more than the 0.3% decline expected. This was largely due to the drop in energy prices.
Core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, climbed by just 0.1%, which was also more modest than the 0.2 % expected.
"The big story this year is not the US spending sequester, the China slowdown or the ongoing European recession," said Ethan Harris, Bank of America Merrill Lynch's top global economist. "The big story is inflation, or more precisely, the lack thereof."
"The weakness has come as a surprise to economic forecasters and an even bigger surprise to many market participants. Critics of the major central banks have repeatedly warned that easy policy would lead to runaway inflation. However, in reality inflation is falling, not rising."
Here's a chart of of BAML's global inflation surprise index. Is you can see, inflation has been surprising economists to the downside all around the world.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Unexpected!
Weekly jobless claims hit highest level in 6 weeks
Published May 16, 2013
Associated Press
Which only means that Fed profligacy is being mopped up by decreased monetary velocity. Decreased monetary velocity is a vote of “NO CONFIDENCE” in gubmint policy.
The Fed has no clothes.
Since retirement, I regularly go to the grocery store with the missus. (She wisely feeds me before we go, or the buget gets blown every time. :-) )
The prices on the chart are Spot On. What we see is that prices no longer increase a few cents each time we visit, it’s now 5-10c a shot. And the house brands are just as bad, cutting the portion as well as increasing the price.
“The economy refuses to recover, even with all the efforts by the federal government.”
There. Fixed it for ya! ;-)
I hear that everyone is cashing in their IRA’s and 401k’s, but I don’t see any indication of that anywhere. The stock exchange keeps going up with all the worthless government scrip money that the treasony department is pumping into it, something like 85 billion dollars a day. The DOW is riding on a column of air and when the government quits huffing and puffing to keep it up, it’ll come crashing down.
Well, obvious... to us. But not to them. That’s why I put it in quotes.
It’s really funny how they can’t understand why their eye keeps hurting no matter how much vinegar they pour in it.
Proving the theory that figures don’t lie if liars don’t figure.
There is no way inflation is low. It is out of control.
I don’t know how any HONEST person can exclude food from the inflation numbers as that is something 100% of the human population needs to survive.
Housing prices are on the rise and almost all of us need housing.
Fuel prices are still much higher than when the POS took over the WH.
Prices on metals are through the roof.
Without gutting the entire Federal government we will never be given honest numbers because too many of the gimme, gimme programs are tied to inflation and if the real inflation numbers were used the government would need more of the money it does not have to pay out.
Who are you going to believe, the government or that lying cash register?
There's a number of ways of getting food inflation numbers:
I was just going to say that prices for food are incredibly higher. So I don’t get this “No inflation” at all.
All kinds of building materials, auto parts and miscellaneous fixtures (plumbing, electrical) etc are all much higher, constantly.
Money growth is too low and we’re starving for credit.
Nonsense. I just paid $2.28/gal of milk, $2.20/lbs of butter and what’s “a pound of beef” - a complaint?
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