From Swadowstats.com
Posted on 06/30/2022 12:41:54 PM PDT by knighthawk
Andy Puzder is a former CEO of CKE Restaurants, chairman of 2ndVote Value Investments, Inc., and a senior fellow at the America First Policy Institute.
Jim Talent is a former U.S. senator from Missouri and the Chairman of the Reagan Institute's National Leadership Council
The outlook for the U.S. economy is bad and potentially getting worse.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I lived through the 70s. Except for the interest rates, we are already there.
President Retard did that 🤪
As strange as it may seem both the Government and media lie. When was the last time either told the truth? Probably at least a thousand years before the Garden of Eden was Created.
But people still take their word as gospel when they say something they want to hear. To Wit} Putin Bad. Trump bad. Those are gospel to the same crowd.
The rat calibrators at MSM let Biden get away with taking food and gas from the inflation figures. Just outrages. They will pull the same BS to keep it from being called recession.
Thelma and Louise car is airborne and rapidly changing trajectory accordingly.
Brakes and airbags are useless at this point and reverse cannot grip air.
Plan accordingly. Brace for impact.
Visit shadow government statistics. It has inflation numbers based on the previous algorithm. We’re at ~17% inflation. Also, all the talk 10 years ago about the fear of deflation, hence keeping interest rates at zero - nonsense. Anyone who went to stores and bought things knew it was nonsense. The shadow stat for inflation in that period was 4-5%. That matches my personal experience much better than zero to negative inflation, which I never experienced.
The longer Jerome Powell delays raising rates, the longer inflation will persist. Powell doe not have a pair like Volcker had. So prepare for many years of double digit inflation.
From Swadowstats.com
I wonder if we can/will get there with the interest rates too. Obviously they need to go much higher to really rein in inflation. But that will skyrocket the deficit as federal interest payments to cover its debts go through the roof. The government _can’t_ tolerate the kind of interest rates we had forty years ago. But if we don’t get those interest rates, what tames inflation?
It may not happen this cycle. We might pull out of our nosedive and tell us everything is OK. But I figure at best we’ll have on more economic cycle before this happens again, and the inability to sustain high interest rates leads a crisis where inflation spins out of control and we get hyperinflation.
(That’s one reason I refuse to sell my bitcoin despite the overwhelming negativity lately - it’s dollars that are in a critical condition sometime fairly soon, not BTC.)
Make that shadowstats.com
WUT? Nobody told me. 🤬
Me, too. It was a horrendous time, but at least I was working and my raises were keeping me somewhat above water. Now I’m retired and watching our net worth go down and down and down. Fifty years of financial planning down the toilet.
Even the old methods didn’t adequately depict the way inflation was felt by a majority of Americans.
I am becoming a national populist with conservative roots. That shift is being made by many Americans. To me that means hard working patriotic Americans pitted again establishment government and big business, i.e., corporatism. A lot of economic statistics have long been manipulated to fit the needs of corporatists. If you value hard working patriotic Americans more than politicians and corporate CEO’s enriching themselves then you need to adjust and make regular the economy to benefit the former. That requires economic statistics that are meaningful and emphasize what is occurring with the former.
For instance, you know that the CPI is bogus if you buy gas, groceries and pay your utility bills. What really matters to most Americans is putting food on the table, driving their car to and from work, and keeping their home lit, heated and cool.
When gas, food and utilities are stripped out of the CPI and aggregated, we have an inflation rate close to 25%. It’s time that the Fed creates monetary policy that matches the metrics important to most Americans. It’s time for government to create policies that meet the majority of American needs, like unleashing American petroleum production.
I dont care if the CRPI says 1% increase. I dont need an official computation to know the price of food I buy, and gas have skyrocketed. Even my son, who just barely understands the value of a dollar, saw and was shocked how much we paid for a bag of groceries the other day.
But with chip shortages, it would seem that even the new algorithm should point to higher inflation.
I don’t know how they calculate it. But what I do know as a manufacturer and wholesaler my input prices have gone through the roof. I am eating much of it but plan a 10%-20% increase before the end of the year. Historically I only raised prices once every 5-7 years when I did a repackaging or rebranding so I could price the product and justify it on a new size/package/features. Others in my field routinely raise prices every year.
I have also moved forward plans for a new product range that I hope I can both shift some existing customers into and also gain new customers - it will be a premium product so it will launch with these new costs and anticipated future cost increases into the pricing.
Personally I think raising interest rates misses the mark. It’s more a supply/demand issue and yes, easy money policy makes it easier for the demand side. But the problem has been supply. I don’t think it is “too much money chasing too limited supply” but rather just “too limited supply”. Sure, demand has increased now that we’re out of the lockdowns but ending the lockdowns hasn’t improved the supply problems.
And frankly I think China’s “zero covid” policy is part of a low-grade economic war they are waging, restricting supply and hiding the reason by claiming it’s health policy.
This is from an article discussing the changes and their intended effect on representing the CPI inflation as low compared to actual.
“The general argument was that changing relative costs of goods results in consumers substituting less-expensive goods for more expensive goods. Allowing for a substitution of goods within the formerly “fixed basket” would allow the consumer flexibility in obtaining a “constant level of satisfaction.” This adjustment to the inflation measure was touted as more appropriate for the GDP concept in measuring shifting demand and weighting actual consumption. Other tricks were also used to give the illusion of less inflation. In cases where the quality of the product are deemed by the government to be “improved” prices in the CPI, calculations are now adjusted lower to offset the higher quality. Extending this idea the Baskin Commission Report, December 4, 1996, actually used steak and chicken for its substitution example.”
In simple terms, as inflation increasing the cost of a good beyond what you can pay, you find a lower quality substitute. They credit inflation with this cost saving instead of recognizing you are forced to accept a lower quality and maybe even inadequate substitute.
This is just a brief example of the tricks that have been put into the CPI to make inflation APPEAR to be low.
So it looks like Biden is helping me to deal with inflation.
Do they count the cost of additional cooking time to get the tougher cuts of meat to become edible?
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