Topic: Monetary Policy
Inflation Nation Ben Bernanke is the new Robert Mugabeby Sterling
(libertarian)
Friday, December 14, 2007
Inflation Nation
$3.49 for a gallon of windshield washer solvent! I left work this evening, turned on the car, and saw that I better stop for gas before driving all the way home. I'd remembered on the way in that the BP around the corner had gas at $2.95 a gallon, a little better than the $2.99 in my home town, so I headed out on south bound East Paris Ave. Darn! As I approached the BP I see they have raised their price 14 cents, to $3.09 during the hours I have been at work - roughly 5% in 9 hours (on top of the 4% previous overnight increase).
Thinking that the BP tends to run a bit high, I kept driving hoping that the Shell station on the corner might be less. Hoping didn't do any good, because like a well "oiled" machine, they had jacked their price up to $3.09 too. Oh well, it's was getting late, I needed gas and wanted to get home. I pull up to the bright yellow pumps at the shell station and look over at the display of windshield washer fluid in between the pumps. The sign says, washer fluid, $2.99 - pink and green $3.49.Up until now, I have been on a low boil about the rampant under-reported inflation everywhere, but this was the last straw. I've rationalized gasoline, food, healthcare and tuition, but washer fluid? I'm only 48 years old, but this stuff was 59 cents a gallon not that long ago. A jug of water with a splash of alcohol and a dash of green dye #5 is three and a half bucks a gallon?
The dollar is toilet paper. We are living in Zimbabwe and Ben Bernanke is Robert Mugabe. Every day, I read about additional injections of "liquidity" into the banking system. This is code for - the Fed printed more fake money to buy bad debts from people who should have known better, thereby baking inflation into everything from A to Z.
Just last night... I was talking to my sister about my trip to the grocery store Saturday. I don't do a lot of grocery shopping since my children are grown, but I was stocking up for a few special Christmas meals I was planning with my family. Since I only go to the grocery store once every 8 - 10 weeks, I think changes jump out at me quicker than people with young families like my little sister. I tend to carry on, but after I went off on a rant about how the prices were jumping faster than Weimar Germany, and that we would soon have to bring a wheel-barrow full of dollars to buy a loaf of bread, she told me about a recent management meeting a friend of hers who works for our local grocer went to. In that meeting upper management told them by years end, the average cost of food will have risen 25%!!! My question tonight is, what do you think the inflation rate is in the United States? The Fed has some heuristic, smoothed, rolling average, six sigma, blah...blah...blah, number that comes in at around 2%, but that is so patentedly absurd as to be laughable. My estimate is through most of the 90's around 7%, but I think it's kicked up in the last 2 years or so to around 12%. I will be interested in hearing from you.
Chairman
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This certainly is the "inflation nation" but hey, how can most Americans even THINK about complaining?? The American way is to want (and to get) the biggest and the best of absolutely everything; the biggest house, the best vehicles, etc. Well, it's time to "pay the piper" and no one's diggin' it so much (including myself), because we've ALL bought into the great American lie...or should I say, dream??
Over 50 years ago now, people should have seen the light and demanded answers to questions that were just BEGGING to be asked. Why the FED and what's its real purpose? Why has congress granted the powers it has to a privately owned consortum of banks, when doing so directly violates the U.S. Constitution? I could go on and on but for the sake of sanity I won't, I think we're all too well aware of the mess we've allowed ourselves as a nation to have gotten into.
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