(09-13-2012, 12:47 AM)kandrathe Wrote: Enacting a monetary policy which persistently attempts to keep short-term real interest rates low that eventually will lead to high inflation and high nominal interest rates, with no permanent increases in the growth of output or decreases in unemployment. And, as I've said before, the published government rates are politically distorted.
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_dat...ion-charts
I think Krugman put it best. What's the price of a subscription to Shadowstats today? $175. What was the price 6 years ago? $175. Amazing how real prices go down by 10% ever year.
Shadowstats is rubbish. They have no useful contribution. Their "alternate" methodology is worse than useless, and leads to the crazy conclusion that the US has had sharply negative growth for a good 30 years, getting worse all the time, to the point where the US should be no richer than Chad. The BLS has offered a thorough debunking here. They exist to do nothing more than provide support for conspiracy theorists who want to think the government is cooking the books about everything.
If you want to construct alternate indices of inflation, the data is all available. The BLS is not hiding anything. Other organizations calculate inflation independently, and except for Shadowstats, they all line up approximately together: see the Billion Price Index, done with online scans. Are they all just politically cooked?
But, of course, some commentators are profoundly committed to two propositions: That things are vastly worse than they seem, and that the government is creating inflation. If one already believe those two things as articles of faith, then surely a website saying just that is attractive indeed - maybe attractive enough that they pay them for the data.
Quote:I'm still seeing that the economy is trapped in boom bust cycles more related to the price of a barrel of oil. http://www.economist.com/node/21549941
So, growth was high in 2008-2009, and should be slowing down now? Because that's what the graph tells me, if oil is what's driving all this...
Quote: What has Switzerlands CPI looked like over the past decade? Are they in a depression?
1) Very, very low inflation. Under 1% annually. Currently experiencing deflation. A central banker's wet dream.
2) Their economy is currently shrinking, and has been growing at well under 1% since the crisis.
-Jester