The issue of inflation is complex everywhere. Official rates are disputed. People can’t reconcile them with what they see at the store. There are different formulas, resulting in different rates, and everyone picks and chooses what suits their needs. But nowhere is the issue as “complex,” infested with lies, and shrouded in obscurity as in Argentina. But 34.9%?
Inflation & Devaluation
Abenomics Tries To Make Sure Japan Is Going Down Swinging
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Abenomics Tries To Make Sure Japan Is Going Down Swinging
Anecdotal evidence has been piling up. Lamborghini sales hit the highest level in 14 years. Ferrari sales jumped 40%. Luxury retailers forecast fat profits. They ascribed it to Abenomics. “The sudden improvement in the stock market led to a big rise in sales at our department stores for luxury brands,” one of them said. But there is a price to pay.
David Stockman: “Money Printers And Wall Street Coddlers”
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on David Stockman: “Money Printers And Wall Street Coddlers”
I’ve been a fan of David Stockman ever since he got in trouble for speaking the truth as Budget Director under President Reagan. But his new book, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America—what an awesome romp through the economic, financial, and monetary shenanigans of our times!
Lies, Damned Lies, And Banks: Deutsche Bank Caught Again
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Lies, Damned Lies, And Banks: Deutsche Bank Caught Again
Deutsche Bank, long coddled by the German government, is mired in “matters” from Libor rate-rigging to carbon-trading tax-fraud. Now a new “matter” seeped out: the bank had known for years about the impact of commodities speculation on food prices and the havoc it wreaked on people in poor countries. And it lied about it to the German Parliament.
Self-Medicating With Watered-Down Bourbon: An Insidious Inflation
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Self-Medicating With Watered-Down Bourbon: An Insidious Inflation
We’ve had an endless series of products whose ingredients have been cheapened in order to maintain the price. Consumers won’t be able to taste the difference, the theory goes. So, as the horse-meat lasagna scandal in Europe is spiraling beautifully out of control, we’re now getting hit where it hurts: Maker’s Mark is watering down its bourbon.
Corporations Are Begging: We Need More Inflation!
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Corporations Are Begging: We Need More Inflation!
Hasbro, second largest toymaker in the US, confessed it would miss revenue estimates. Christmas wasn’t kind. Despite “double digit growth” in emerging markets, revenues fell by 2% for 2012 and by 3.8% for the quarter. Other corporations are in a similar predicament. But substantive inflation would have covered it up—not that the Fed hasn’t been trying.
Making Heroes of Those Who Slash Jobs
by Wolf Richter • • 3 Comments
Especially of CEOs who parachute into the executive office. Wall Street’s knee-jerk reaction can be phenomenal. Citigroup’s massacre of 11,000 souls caused its stock to jump. But the same day, we learn that wages adjusted for inflation dropped 1.4% in the third quarter—a continuation of 12 years of declines that has hollowed out the middle class, pushed people into the lower classes, and devastated the poor.
From Horrid To Merely Dismal: Feeling Better About The New Reality
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on From Horrid To Merely Dismal: Feeling Better About The New Reality
The inexplicable American consumer, the strongest creature out there that no one has been able to subdue yet, has come to grips with a new reality, euphemistically called “New Normal,” though it isn’t normal by any means, but dismal. Feeling more upbeat, they nudged up the Consumer Confidence Index to a level not seen since February 2008—a level that caused people to tear their hair out at the time.
QE, Zimbabwe, And The Surreptitious 30% Haircut Every Decade
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on QE, Zimbabwe, And The Surreptitious 30% Haircut Every Decade
Dizzying QE gobbledygook is upon us once again. It would restart its big 480-volt money printer, in addition to the desktop machine it had been using recently, the Fed said, in order “to help ensure that inflation, over time, is at the rate most consistent with its dual mandate,” namely “maximum employment and price stability.” Thus, more inflation magically creates more jobs, and “price stability” requires more inflation in order to become more … stable maybe?
The Pauperization Of America
by Wolf Richter • • 8 Comments
It’s been an unrelenting process. Survey after survey has shown that wages haven’t kept up with inflation since the wage peak in 2000. Families earned less at the end of the decade than at the beginning, a phenomenon not seen since World War II—the process of hollowing out the middle class. But now there is a new phenomenon: the unmentionable class, the class that doesn’t exist in America, is ballooning.