Category: Inflation
The analysis published under this category are as follows.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Central Banks Inflation Quandary As Gold Prices in More US Interest Rate Cuts / Interest-Rates / Inflation
By: Christopher_Laird
When the Fed cut the discount and target rates by .5% they tied the hands of some other central banks who have been wanting to raise rates. From China, to the Middle East, to the EU and then Japan, each has reacted in its own way as they find they have to take into serious consideration what the Fed does. Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Rising Inflation Expectations Amidst An Inflationary Storm :2008-2009 / Economics / Inflation
By: Jordan_Roy_Byrne
The average person isn't concerned yet about inflation. They have witnessed and experienced rising costs in food, energy, healthcare and tuition while the government and media consistently proclaim inflation to be low and well contained. Do these people have an ounce of decency? The roots of their corrupt and deceitful behavior can be traced back to a fiat monetary system that operates on debt and inflation, which is a form of counterfeiting. Joe Sixpack knows all this isn't right. But he doesn't know the true cause of rising prices in everyday living expenses, nor does he believe things are unmanageable. At least not yet. To date the Fed has succeeded in obfuscating inflation to the public. They have kept inflation expectations low enough. Though once the public wises up, their confidence game is lost. Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, September 28, 2007
Stagflation Revisited - Economic Contraction and High Inflation / Economics / Inflation
By: Peter_Schiff
Currently, Wall Street is divided into two camps: those who feel the Fed should fight recession, and those who feel it should fight inflation. The former feel that a recession can only be avoided if the Fed rescues the economy from the imploding housing market. To these analysts, inflation is not a problem as it will be contained by slower growth. The other camp maintains that the housing slowdown is not significant enough to derail the otherwise healthy U.S. economy, and should therefore not distract the Fed from its primary mission of fighting inflation. As usual on Wall Street, both camps have it wrong. Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, September 21, 2007
Feds Interest Rate Cut to Ignite Inflation As Dollar Collapses - The Worst Fed Move in History! / Interest-Rates / Inflation
By: Peter_Schiff
Helicopter Ben Earns His Wings: Coming at a time when rate increases were needed to combat the sinking dollar and surging gold, oil and other commodity prices, Ben Bernanke’s 50 basis point cuts in the Fed funds and discount rates this week may go down as the most irresponsible move in Fed history.Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, September 21, 2007
Hyperinflation or Recession? / Economics / Inflation
By: Brian_Bloom
Zimbabwe is a country where hyperinflation is a reality as opposed to a theoretical possibility. The photograph below shows what it looks like to pay for lunch for eight people in that country. It was sent to me in an email dated September 18 th , 2007 . The meal – consisting of fillet steaks and beers – cost six million Zimbabwean dollars. What you are looking at is that amount of money in $1,000 notes being collected by the restaurant manager. I don't know if it included a Z$600,000 tip or not. The restaurant has no menu. Patrons wanting to eat are not offered a choice. They ask “what's left?” Still, they are able to smile. Such is the indomitability of the human spirit. Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Inflate, Inflate, Inflate, Stagflation! / Economics / Inflation
By: Money_and_Markets
Larry Edelson writes : What concerns me most today is not the mortgage meltdown in the U.S. That's because it's not the cause of our country's economic problems. Rather, the mortgage meltdown and credit market panic are just symptoms of a much deeper, underlying disease.
That disease is the fiscal and monetary fiasco I have been warning you about for the last several years. Specifically, I'm talking about Washington's reckless spending. The government is racking up public debts like there's no tomorrow!
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Beware - The Bernanke Fed Could Ignite Hyper-Inflation! Money Supply Surging, Dollar Plunging / Economics / Inflation
By: Gary_Dorsch
“You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension, a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. It's a journey into a wondrous land, whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's a signpost up ahead, your next stop, the “Twilight Zone!” Rod Serling was a multi-talented man and a prolific writer. His television series “The Twilight Zone” ran for five seasons in the early 1960's and was extraordinary, winning three Emmy Awards. As the host and narrator, and writer of more than half of 151 episodes, he became an American household name and his voice always sounded a creepy reminder of a world beyond our control.
Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, September 10, 2007
Inflation Surge Expected As Food Costs Continue to Soar / Economics / Inflation
By: Adrian_Ash
"...The average weekly shopping bill is set to rise by 30% between now and Christmas in the United Kingdom ..."
ADAM LEYLAND, editor of The Grocer – the food & drink industry's favorite weekly reading here in the United Kingdom – says the cost of the average Briton's weekly shopping bill could rise 30% by December.
Thirty per cent? By Christmas?
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Your Wealth Is Being Confiscated Through Inflation / Economics / Inflation
By: Money_and_Markets
Larry Edelson writes: I'd like to start this issue by quoting three great authors. Although they were from very different walks of life, they shared an understanding of exactly what the global economy is going through today, especially the events here in the U.S. …Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, August 27, 2007
US Dollar RIP / Economics / Inflation
By: Adrian_Ash
"...The call for more money to fix the financial markets comes just as global inflation is beginning to cause real mischief..."
EVEN IN DEATH, it seems, you're no longer safe from the iniquities of inflation.
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
GOLD THOUGHTS - Federal Reserves Flawed Monetary Policy / Interest-Rates / Inflation
By: Ned_W_Schmidt
Complete and total intellectual bankruptcy of Federal Reserve was confirmed this past week. Creation and collapse of two financial bubbles in eight years would seem to suggest monetary philosophy of Federal Reserve is fatally flawed. Core rate of inflation as a tool for managing monetary policy should be declared dead, and buried in history books of foolish thinking.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Can China's Central Bank Wait Until August 25, 2008 to Rein In Inflation? / Economics / Inflation
By: Paul_L_Kasriel
The Chinese government reported today that Chinese consumer inflation in July reached 5.6% on a year-over-year basis - its highest rate since February 1997. As the chart below shows, Chinese consumer inflation has been trending higher throughout 2007. The People's Bank of China (PBOC) and the Chinese central government has implemented a series of measures this year in an attempt to rein in consumer price as well as asset price inflation.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, July 20, 2007
Central Bankers - Stop! Or the Economy Gets It / Economics / Inflation
By: Adrian_Ash
"...If only consumers hadn't taken the world's central bankers at their word..."
WE ONLY have ourselves to blame. Consumers in the West, rich in credit ratings if not cash, shouldn't have borrowed and spent so much money when interest rates hit a half-a-century low in 2003.
Nor should we have continued to borrow and spend when the rate of interest slipped below the inflation rate – making debt pay as cash savings lost value – over the next two years.
Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Explaining the US Consumer Price Index / Economics / Inflation
By: John_Mauldin
This week in Outside the Box we look at a Congressional Budget Office publication that dives us the details on how the consumer price index for all urban consumers (CPI-U) is created. This is, as the CBO posits, the best-known official measure of inflation.The brief that follows will venture to explain the methods used to construct the CPI-U, and how and why the index's estimates of inflation might differ from a consumer's perceptions of price changes. Though I think this article may be somewhat akin to discovering what components comprise the makeup of sausages (knowledge that is usually best left undiscovered), it is useful to understand just how the inflation data is constructed. Some of the points they make are controversial, especially when it comes to "hedonic" pricing, which they refer to as "shifts in the quality of goods and services over time." This does allow for some quite subjective influence in the inflation numbers. While I will visit this topic in a later letter, it is good to know what is and is not being measured.
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
UK Government is Still Underestimating Inflation According to Fool.co.uk's Inflation Index / Personal_Finance / Inflation
By: Fool.co.uk
Despite two interest rate hikes this year to curb the cost of living, Fool.co.uk readers say official inflation figures are still wide of the mark (1).
- Consumers say the true rate of inflation is 7.3% not 2.5%
- Inflation is lower for men than women
- Older people are worst affected by inflation
- Scotland experiences the lowest rate of inflation
- Northern Ireland experiences the highest rate of inflation
Monday, July 02, 2007
ECB Educational Inflation Video is Propaganda with a Capital ‘P' / InvestorEducation / Inflation
By: Mike_Hewitt
The European Central Bank (ECB) has a “educational” video on Price Stability. The video is intended to be a teachers' aid. It, and associated teacher aid materials, can be downloaded from the ECB website here . For quicker viewing, the video can also be seen on YouTube.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Inflation Statistics - The Biggest Hoax of All Time! / Economics / Inflation
By: Money_and_Markets
Larry Edelson writes: I am thoroughly convinced that they're smoking something in Washington. After all, the pundits by the Potomac keep dishing out these absurdly low inflation figures, thinking you're too dumb to realize they're full of it!
Case in point: Last Friday's Consumer Price Index (CPI) data. The so-called "core" inflation rate rose a modest 0.1%. So every politician on the Hill plus all the idiot Wall Street analysts grabbed onto that figure and proclaimed inflation "dead."
Inflation? "Not a problem" … "tame" … "easy to deal with" — those were some of the comments and headlines that came out after the figure was released.
Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Interest Rates and Global Growth / Interest-Rates / Inflation
By: Hans_Wagner
If investors want to beat the market, they need to understand how global growth is affecting interest rates and inflation. Bill Gross of Pimco Bonds, the world's largest bond management firm, stated in his most recent investment outlook that “With the possibility of creeping inflationary tendencies, especially in weak currency countries including the U.S., combined with the potential reduction of financial flow subsidies which to this point have favored fixed income vs. equity and real commodity investments, we come to the following range forecasts for the secular timeframe from 2007 to 2011.”Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, June 16, 2007
May CPI: Still Scant Evidence of Food/Energy Price Surge Pass-Through / Economics / Inflation
By: Paul_L_Kasriel
If this headline looks familiar, it is because yesterday's commentary had almost the same headline, save for "PPI" instead of "CPI." (Speaking of yesterday's commentary, I inadvertently omitted a chart, which no one called to my attention. Hmm, perhaps no one other than me read it!) As the table below indicates, headline CPI inflation has accelerated, primarily because of spiking energy prices. But excluding energy and food prices, the so-called core rate of CPI inflation is moderating (see Chart 1). On a year-over-year basis, the previous peak in all-items CPI inflation occurred way back in September 2005 at 4.7% -- a full 200 basis point over its current rate.Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, June 15, 2007
Inflation Invasion / Economics / Inflation
By: Andy_Sutton
Imagine this for a scene: It is that fateful night and you are on the Titanic. You have just witnessed a collision with a massive iceberg and can hear the water rushing into the 'waterproof' compartments. The Captain comes to the railing and begins telling the passengers in a very monotonous, soothing, familiar pentameter that everything is fine. You look up and there stands...Ben Bernanke??Read full article... Read full article...