[DB]

In my opinion, there is substantial inflation going on even though it is claimed otherwise. I'm in the process of building a new home and common material costs have increased dramatically over the last few years. Steel has increased something like 60% in just the last year. Lumber has more than doubled in the last four years I believe. Virtually everything else has been the same trend.

[familyop]

"I'm in the process of building a new home and common material costs have increased dramatically over the last few years."

Larger quantities of our lumber, for one, are being shipped to other countries, especially China. The current and ongoing economic policy (along with high oil prices also due to much more consumption in China and other countries) should adjust that insanity and other problems. And BTW, while China consumes much of our lumber, China is conserving its own huge forest preverses in Communist (or more recently, fascist) fashion.

Thank goodness, policy and fortune that it is now becoming more expensive to ship such enormous percentages of one of our natural resources overseas. Maybe some of our brightest will also start new domestic small mills (as many of the older small mills were run out of business by their competition in partnership with radical environmentalists).

But yes, certain investors and corporates will complain loudly against it, just as they did against the fed's rate lowering not so long ago (which eventually brought the current trend). Good and secure policy is sometimes uncomfortable, at first. It's time for us to hire more inventive, productive workers (instead of socially oriented witch doctors) to earn our dollars the honest way--by producing more usable goods here and selling them here.

[Sarah]

Your steel and lumber examples are odd, they aren't blameable on the week dollar, as they're American industries, no?

[jb6]

When the Fed calculates inflation, they take out everything that is variable: fuel, oil, food, etc. The claim is that it is to unpredictable to calculate, thus there is the claim of only 1% inflation, hahahahaha.

[Mamzelle]

We've been selling a lot of those raw mat'ls (it's been amazing to watch concrete prices!) to China, because China is on a frenzy of public works projects. I really don't know much about all this stuff, am no economist but like to read about it, but everything on your list is "raw" stuff.

[Flavius]

Your lumber and steel is due to giant sucking sound of Big Red China gulping up all the raw commodities...