Thursday, May 12, 2011

Today's Nonsensical Numbers

Today's inflation numbers are in. Inflation is charging along at either a 6.6% per year or a 2.1% per year rate. What's the difference? If you don't eat or drive a car, heat your house or otherwise use food and energy, why we are only looking at 2.1%. The theory is that food and energy are "too volatile" to use in the "core" inflation rates, and that those numbers will tend to the core rate over time. Unfortunately, the amount of history available for such statistical analysis is only about 100 years or 1200 months. To reliably decide that not using food and energy is a reliable method would require something closer to 10,000 years of data. In other words, the government is treating us like mushrooms: keeping us in the dark and feeding us on manure.

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