BigBallinStalin wrote:Phatscotty wrote:statistically, at least going back 4-5 centuries, deflation is to be expected 5% of the time. I have a legitimate fear of deflation, although it will take immense microscoping to filter through the bullshit they hide it with. As for the speculation, we are going to have to wing it pretty much. We have ideas of how we battled deflation before, but that was 70 something years ago. Deflation is it's own monster. We can't figure it out until we get to see what it looks like. All we know for sure is that it is not good.
Hey, ever heard of Kondratiev?
No wonder they're so worried, and perhaps that explains why they're so willing to cause inflation ahead of time to try to cancel out expected deflation, but there's plenty of room to mess things up.
I've heard of K-waves in this economics book about how countries progress from "less developed" to "highly developed." It was called something like The Six Steps Towards Economic Development, or something like that.
My problem with K-waves is that they've reached that wavelength by averaging past incidents, but since its based on this seemingly arbitrary pattern, how can one use k-waves to make reliable expectations? The k-wave cycle has like a 20 year +/-... so it seems to be a bit unreliable.
yeah I was thinking that too, about covering it with massive inflation. The truth is, they have pushed the envelope on inflation numbers so hard and for so long, that nowadays it's just normal to exclude food, energy, and shelther from inflation reports. sure, sugar and tin and cotton are still in the inflation index. those are easy to control. You have to get independent info for any real inflation data, because you can't get a straight story from Kudlow without him concluding that the inflation is just exported to China (not the end of the discussion though). Look at gold. It has basically quadrupled, and yet they continue to report inflation at 3% every year, year after year.
Let me share a story with you about another kind of inflation that can hardly be reported on. For at least 14 years, on my lunch break, I always brought that Carl Budding ham with me to work, with 2 buns. way way wayyyyy back, in 1996, that costed me 89 cents. buns were 20 (2) and ham was 49. Everyday, I make my sandwich, and seperate the ham because I like my sandwich fluffy and cant stand the ham all stuck together. so I count them out to make sure each sandwich has the same amount of ham. It used to come out to 20 pieces, 10 pieces for bun. So, after a while, just guessing, but around 98, the price went to 59 cents, but I also noticed I was only getting 18 pieces per sandwich....and later in 03, 59-69 cents, with only 17 pieces, and then in 05 69-79 cents with 16 pieces. They are holding the line at 16, although I have found a few 15's and personally hand written a letter to Carl Budding telling him "THIS IS BULLSHIT!"
lately, the price has been as much as 89, and maybe even 99. Sometimes they are on sale, 4/3$ the buns are up to 49-59 by the way. So yeah my lunch can be over 3 dollars (new food tax 4 years ago). Consider also, the production plant is probably not hiring, and most likely cutting jobs and trying to manage the recession. (since they rolled back their premium line? of which brown sugar maple ham was my fav and would pay over a dollar for! of course, only 12 pieces tho...
) Also, what about all the money comapnies are supposed to be saving with less paper work (internet/computers) less benifits, better energy efficiency, cheaper packaging (outsourced)....My point here is that there is some kind of invisible vacuum making a huge sucking noise, devouring more and more money and forcing people to raise their prices, even though inflation is only 3%...it's the government, stupid
](./images/smilies/eusa_wall.gif "Brick wall")
