Posted on 11/16/2010 11:15:52 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The National Inflation Association (NIA) has backed former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin in her opposition to the proposed Federal Reserve stimulus measure.
After the Fed announced last week that it would buy up to $900 billion in Treasury bonds in an effort to stimulate the economy, Palin urged Chairman Ben Bernanke to "cease and desist," and expressed her opinion that the Federal government "shouldn't be playing around with inflation."
The former vice presidential candidate subsequently came under fire for her comments. The Wall Street Journal staff reporter Sudeep Reddy penned an article about food inflation, which suggested that the consumer price index's (CPI) measure of food and beverage prices has risen by less than 0.6 percent in the first nine months of this year.
However, NIA representatives countered this argument, saying that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) CPI is not a reliable indicator of any type of price inflation. In fact, the organization believes that the BLS has artificially manipulated the CPI downward, and the real inflation rate may be closer to 5 percent and may rise to more than 10 percent by early 2011.
NIA also expressed concern that if the current policies continue, the average American will depend on the government to survive by the 2012 presidential elections.
"Obama's strategy to get re-elected is to make as many Americans as possible dependent on him and scared to elect a true Libertarian candidate like Ron Paul, who will dramatically reduce government spending in an attempt to prevent hyperinflation," the organization stated.
food only gone up 0.6% is a laugh. Anyone who buy their own food know its gone up way more than that. I’m guestimate its about 10-20%
So does anyone else who actually buys food in the real world. Washingont “elites” excluded by definition...
Some things much more than that.
That .6% rise in food prices takes around 10% more out of my wallet now, and that is with dropping all major brands in favor of store brands and cutting out luxury foods that I had not considered to be luxuries until this year. I am sure that the food basket used to calculate the food CPI is reshuffled each time to remove those items that are rising the most and to include items that are falling in price because no one buys them any more due to the increased expense of food generally. Or they just lie about it.
Their methodology, unlike Labor Department's, includes "volatile" items such as food, beverages as well as items sold through online channels but doesn't include education and transportation (which Labor Department includes in calculating CPI) because they don't change frequently and aren't critical to the index calculation, and transportation costs are mostly reflected in prices of consumer items. The MIT economists have been collecting data and calculating the index for the last three years. They were able to detect the onset and the ending of the last U.S. recession and hope that the data and the website can be used in the future to estimate and evaluate CPI more accurately and timely.
Excerpt from Inflation in Real Time - B, by Robin Goldwyn Blumenthal, 2010 November 13:
< snip > ..... Interestingly, the MIT Sloan index has been "very close" to the oft-maligned government indicator, Rigobon says. As for Palin's and others' contention that food prices have risen "significantly" over the past year, Rigobon begs to differ. After a fast start, they've been flat since July, up for the year about 1%. Says he: "I'm a Republican, but I think Bernanke is doing the right thing."
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