A friend emails me that yesterday’s CPI discussion was picked up by Dow Jones Newswires:
05/17 11:29AM DJ MARKET TALK: It’s A Pretty Picture, It Just Doesn’t Look Real
11:29 (Dow Jones) Official measures of core inflation paint a picture of mild and controllable price increases, but they may not be painting a very realistic picture. "The U.S. consumer is confronted with rapidly rising costs for food, energy, health care, housing, education expenses," Barry Ritholtz writes at the Big Picture. Every day expenses as well as larger expenses have "exploded," he says, but little of that inflation shows up in the official stats. "It is as if economists are asking consumers ‘Who are you gonna believe, us, or your lying eyes?’ " (PJV)
(http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2007/05/inflation_error.html)
MARKET TALK can be found using N/DJMT
I’ve long been a fan of DJMT, so I find this was cool . . .
Kudlow was right!!
“This Ritholtz guy is going places”
Hey Barry,
Over at my house, ex-expenses our inflation level is ZERO. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!
Let’s hope it’s not down a open manhole he stepped into !
:]
Definitely WAY cool, Barry.
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Just think of CPI as a “political” number to serve a poltical process. Goverment pensions and social security is tied to this number, so it has to be restrained. Fixed income hedge fund managers will not be looking at CPI to determine ‘real inflation’. They have to look elsewhere.
If AARP members ever start reading blogs, or talking to their kids who read blogs, all hell is going to break lose regarding statistical gerrymandering.
AARP members even write blogs – check out http://www.timegoesby.net/
Wait until Barry’s posts make it into Readers’ Digest!
In the last few months quite a few of our service providers (accountant, lawn moving services, sport fees…) increased their prices by over 20% because they had not done so in at least four years!
On top of being manipulated, inflation is lagging!
have you ever felt like you are standing on the railroad station platform and no one else is there and you have this sinking feeling like you just missed the train and the next one coming along isn’t for a very long time and the only thing that you have to read is the WSJ with headlines that scream “New Market Highs in all the Indices”?