Inflation in the most important things: Inflation hitting housing, tuition, and medical services. Is the Fed reinventing another debt based bubble?
Household income is a vital measure of the overall well-being for most Americans. This is why it is important to try to understand why overall household incomes are back to levels last seen in 1995. This is a critical barometer that measures the health of the US middle class. Yet we continually see the argument [...]
Does inflation matter? The real cost of living for middle class Americans. Fed on path to growing balance sheet to $4 trillion.
Does inflation matter? If you ask this question to the Fed, it appears like it doesn’t. The Fed is doing everything it can to stoke the fires of inflation. Instead, what it is doing is causing further asset bubbles and misallocation of capital in markets. For most people the cost of living is becoming more [...]
Who’s afraid of a little bit of inflation? How low interest rates hide the real price of housing, college tuition, and cars.
Inflation is like the proverbial story of a frog in hot water. Drop a frog in boiling water, it jumps right out. Drop a frog in regular water but slowly raise the heat, and it will slowly boil into oblivion. Inflation has a subtle way of destroying purchasing power. Unless incomes are rising, which they [...]
Inflation eats away the new peak in stock market: Dow is down 11 percent since 2000 adjusting for inflation. Looking at the stock market and the impact of inflation.
The Dow has now reached a new peak. The media is prancing up and down like a giddy school girl as if this had a significant impact on the bottom line for most Americans. Don’t let the details out that many companies have increased their bottom line by squeezing wages and cutting worker benefits. Yet [...]
Inflation unchained: US dollar down 23 percent from 2000, Tuition up 72 percent, and home values up 44 percent. Incomes adjusting for inflation are back to 1990s levels.
It is hard to believe that people in the US are still denying the obvious impact of inflation. The slow erosion of purchasing power has occurred for many decades now. What people tend to forget in a completely fiat based system is that the Fed can print as much money as it likes. And they [...]
Are we missing critical inflation data with the CPI? How the government over time has altered the CPI to under report inflation.
Most Americans realize that their standard of living has decreased. Many realize today that their dollars do not go as far as they once did. We try to reflect this data via the Consumer Price Index but over the last few decades, this index has been adjusted to suit the needs of those producing the [...]
Inflation by any other name – Central banks around the world increase balance sheets from $2 trillion in 2008 to $6 trillion in 2013. The slow erosion of purchasing power in the US.
The Federal Reserve has been trying with all its power to stoke inflation. This is not the stated mission and you will not hear this proclaimed over loud speakers but if actions speak louder than words, this is the policy they are following. Yet the Fed is picking winners and losers with their inflation targeting. [...]
The Temple of Inflation – where does the typical Americans spend their money? A comparison between 1986 and today.
For most people that I know the mortgage and rent payment will eat up the largest portion of a monthly budget. This is the case for the vast majority of Americans as well. Housing is the biggest line item expense on the monthly budget. For the most part people tend to think that the Federal [...]
Inflation by any other name – Rising rents have pushed up the CPI to highest monthly change in three years. Shifting the Fed bailouts onto the working class and poor.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) attempts to measure the change in price for a basket of American goods and services. I say attempts because measures like the “owner’s equivalent of rent” are simply an estimation as to what a home owner’s place would rent for. In the early 2000s with home prices surging, it missed [...]
When it costs more to be poor – Fed and government shifting inflation onto rent, medical care, and food. QE3 to widen the gap between the poor and the wealthy.
Inflation has been picking up since the recession ended in 2009. The problem with the CPI increasing year over year with no rise in household incomes is that the standard of living for most Americans erodes every year that incomes do not keep up. Household incomes are back to levels last seen in the mid-1990s [...]
