Inflation AND deflation at the same time? Economic straws in the wind
by futurist Richard Worzel, C.F.A.
I’ve noticed a strange development recently: two indicators that I follow for inflation and deflation are both rising, implying that we may be headed for a period of both inflation and deflation at the same time. Since no reputable economist that I’ve ever read would conceive of such an apparent oxymoron, this caught my attention. First let me describe the indicators, discuss how it might happen despite the apparent contradiction, and then talk about some of the potential implications and what you might do about them.
In the Carter years, economists said that we couldn’t have rising inflation AND rising unemployment at the same time.
Here’s the brutal truth: Economics is not a science, dismal or otherwise. They’re a bunch of mathematical BS artists who have been hoodwinking people and policy makers for centuries now. Left, right, center - doesn’t matter. They’re infected with a love of their own theories, which are almost invariably nothing more than a collection of loose statistical relationships from cherry-picked data over a narrow set of circumstances and time so as to not provide too many problems for them to resolve in their theories.