Huge CPI Revisions - Prices Rose Much Faster Than Originally Reported, for Months

MISH Talk ^ | 2/13/23

[EBH]

If you thought prices were rising faster than the BLS said, you were right. Let's discuss revisions.

Each year with the release of the January CPI, seasonal adjustment factors are recalculated to reflect price movements from the just-completed calendar year. This routine annual recalculation may result in revisions to seasonally adjusted indexes for the previous 5 years. [And it did in spades] Recalculated seasonally adjusted indexes as well as recalculated seasonal adjustment factors for the period January 2018 through December 2022 were made available on Friday, February 10, 2023.

All Items as Reported and Revised

December as Reported -0.1, As Revised +0.1

November as Reported +0.1, As Revised +0.2

October as Reported +0.4, As Revised +0.5

September as Reported +0.4, As Revised +0.4

August as Reported +0.1, As Revised +0.2

[FLT-bird]

Gee, ya don’t say? Anybody who was paying attention knows the real rate of inflation is about double what the government claims it is. They stripped out food, fuel and rent claiming they were “volatile”. Those just happen to be the things that had the highest inflation. If you put those back into the calculation and calculate inflation the way we used to back in the late 70s/early 80s, the real rate of inflation has been running at 16%-18%. That is actually a little worse than it was in the late 70s.

[Justa]

“Grocery, fuel and electricity are up 100% over a couple of years ago.”

Not sure those are included in CPI.

[Texas resident]

The CPI excludes food and fuel. Their excuse is that those markets are too volatile. So their numbers are garbage.

[Theoria]

Core cpi excludes food and energy, cpi has both.

[TomGuy]

REVISED UP!

All those ‘good’ reports the last 2 quarters were just fun-with-numbers to make Biden look a bit better for the SOTU.

The hyped ‘down’ numbers didn’t fool anyone who does grocery shopping.

And the current quarter is starting off to be another disaster. January was UP 0.4% over December. That is HUGE, Hugh even, because it will likely be REVISED UP when the revised number is released.

Yellen is going to have a difficult time defending her boss after these revisions.

FED doesn’t meet until March 21-22, so they might be forced into a larger rate increase.

[ConservativeInPA]

It seems that we need focus on a different set of economic indicators and have different set of people measuring. Specifically, people not in government. They are not trustworthy. As for focus, I mean people in the media and fiscal/monetary policy decision makers. There are plenty of economic indicators that already exist, people just do not know about them and they are not reported in the MSM.

[EBH]

I agree. My travel clients are all booking months in advance. I do not see a slow down as of yet.

So far only one a scrounging for a discount at a time I am looking to raise rates...again.

[TomGuy]

back in the late 70s/early 80s

If that time period is any indicator, we are in for a lot more inflation.

Then, inflation was rampant through the Nixon, Ford, Carter and early Reagan eras. Carter was just unlucky enough to get the brunt of the blame. Price controls were tried by Nixon. Inflation ran wild for roughly 15 years.

Biden has been in office just over 2 years and major inflation began because of some of his poor decisions early on. The economy has been described as a freight train pulling a heavy load. It doesn't start or stop on a dime. We likely won't see any real decline in inflation for years.

[aquila48]

“BLS” ist that an abbreviation for “bull shit”?

[devere]

The headline is inaccurate. It is slightly faster, not “much faster”. More fake news to scare people.