The largest newspaper in the US, which is also the largest newspaper to endorse Harris, and which hasn't endorsed a Republican for President since 1956 -- The New York Times -- this morning has a "news" article titled "Inflation Is Basically Back to Normal. Why Do Voters Still Feel Blah?"

But inflation isn't back to normal. If you look at the ( Read more... )

Had a full commute day, and my knee is not OK. So, I'm thinking that whether gout has been involved or not, there's something more going on than gout. So, after carefully examining my knee and finding there's a specific spot that is tender to the touch, I queried Google and ChatGPT, and I'm going to pause on the running for at least a week. If ( Read more... )

If you average the monthly consumer price index during all of 2023, and compare this to the average during all of 2022, consumer inflation was 4.1% during 2023. That was the third highest annual price increase of the past 30 years, the most inflation except for 2022 (8.0%) and 2021 (4.7%). The price increases of the past three years were the ( Read more... )

Consumer prices are up 18% since Biden's inauguration on 1/20/2021. During the equivalent period under Trump, consumer prices were up 6 ( Read more... )

There are several different inflation statistics that are calculated using different baskets of goods and services. The most broad and comprehensive measure that I'm aware of is the GDP implicit price deflator, which attempts to measure inflation spread across all the goods and services produced in the US weighted by the amount of each item ( Read more... )

A good but long, busy, and exhausting work day. I arrived home to find T had cooked dinner! It was yummy. We shared a bottle of white wine with it, and kept talking with each other until around 9pm. Now I'm in bed with Astrid. Not many more evenings left for talking with T before his next away cycle ( Read more... )

We don't have good GDP figures for the 1920s, but we do have good industrial production figures starting with 1919. We also have good figures for the money supply in the 1920s ( Read more... )

It is possible for both of these statements to be true ( Read more... )

When you think about the economy, you usually think about it in terms of your functional currency -- in the US, the Dollar.  In Germany, the Euro.  In Japan, the Yen.  In the UK, the Pound.  This creates an illusion -- the money illusion -- because you can't use money for anything at all, you must first trade your money for something else.  Yet we ( Read more... )

I've written before about the gigantic, unprecedented, surge of US Dollars dumped into the economy during the pandemic, and about how I don't think our current burst of inflation is going away anytime soon.  Here's one graph that shows why:


( Read more... )