Econbrowser: Inflation expectations and the Fed 

Subtract $1500 per family for their share of deficit spending last year.

nova wrote:

tailspin

howdy y'all

YouTube - TaleSpin Intro

Freddie Mac Bets Against American Homeowners - ProPublica

Off the usual political shill stuff: Brad DeLong: If You Think That the Equilibrium Real Ten-Year Treasury Rate Is 2.5%/Year...

Hard core economic analysis dictates we are still essentially in recovering, but very slowly.

Now, go out and buy some houses, and catch this:

So, the real question is how long after the election does it take for the Fed to aggressively continue the expansion of monetary policy? I give it six weeks.

We now return to the primary meltdown of Newt- didn't the witches in MacBeth need some eye of Newt?

Hmmmm....finally a use for him, because he sure can't read the writing on the wall.

Someday this war's gonna end....

"......excluding food and energy"

.......Can someone again explain to this rather simple individual WHY food and energy is always excluded? Food and energy has at times moved like a roller coaster car.

My 4-tile pledge for any Corzine jail time still looks like a safe bet. He can steal with impunity.

Today I am feeling remorse for all the negative things I said about cats last night.

Black Star Ranch wrote:

Food and energy has at times moved like a roller coaster car.

The excuse is because of the 'volatility' that is temporary. The problem is for those of us who really must put food in our bellies and get from point A to point B-is the volatility many times doesn't return to its 'mean' over a years time. Greenspan changed this formulation WAY BACK. It was specifically so that SS recipients, and employees of gov like soldier, veterans, workers of all ilks wages remained 'stabilized'. Then businesses adopted it for their use in determining wage increases based on inflationary measures.

Edit to add: This is my understanding of it. I might be wrong and if I am,I'm sure I'll be corrected.

ac wrote:

Today I am feeling remorse for all the negative things I said about cats last night.

Good guy cat

The excuse is because of the 'volatility' that is temporary. The problem is for those of us who really must put food in our bellies

I was in a green grocer/natural food store this weekend because my wife had bought some Groupon discounts for it. A half gallon of organic orange juice was $8.69. There were some other stunners there as well. Needless to say, we didn't get the juice.

And gas is $3.70

Nanoo-Nanoo wrote:

It was specifically so that SS recipients, and employees of gov like soldier, veterans, workers of all ilks wages remained 'stabilized'.

Congress has been talking of more 'stabilization' for SS by switching to core CPI. No one wants to overpay retired folks.

Hey, where is Obama's deficit committee? Did the Super Committee get anything done? Or is a trillion dollar deficit the low water mark from this point until complete collapse?

12th Percentile wrote:

A half gallon of organic orange juice was $8.69. There were some other stunners there as well. Needless to say, we didn't get the juice.

Unicorn rainbows don't come cheap!

Mr Slippery wrote:

No one wants to overpay retired folks.

Oh yes, heaven forbid since that has kept up so well over the last two decades. Any increases in SS income is usually immediately subtracted from the 'paycheck' by increases (and then some usually) in Medicare premiums while what Medicare (all parts) pays for continues to decline.

sa

REBear wrote:

The Chinese and Indians will pick up the $9 orange juice

esp if the exchange rate works in their favor. If USD goes down the tubes, then the Brazilian growers would rather export to a stronger currency. I wonder if the US Growers would do the same.

RayOnTheFarm wrote:

If USD goes down the tubes, then the Brazilian growers would rather export to a stronger currency. I wonder if the US Growers would do the same.

will be the only thing profitable enough to be worth growing in USSA

Banks face ratings downgrade on funding |
News.com.au

justaskin wrote:

but god help you if you mess with dogs.....

Indeed>

Comrade Kristina wrote:

But they do work to keep big Pharma making big money

Psychoactives for profit! What could go wrong?

Same here, Nanoo. There is so much outrage to pick from it's hard to decide each morning who to up

Greece Debt Deal Near

Any Plan Must Include Growth Component

Buy Dividend Paying Stocks

OT

Moloch possesses microwave?

Sure, it LOOKS like a standard consumer appliance... at first.

REBear wrote:

may not be pharma

Yeah, those commercials on TV for Rx only drugs don't pay for themselves ya know.

Top 10 Pharma CEO salaries of 2010 - FiercePharma
Uhm, yeah. These poor guys are just flat broke...

1. Bill Weldon - J&J - $28.7M
2. Daniel Vasella - Novartis - $27M
3. Miles White - Abbott- $25.6M
4. Jeffrey Kindler - Pfizer- $24.7M
5. Richard Clark - Merck - $24.6M
6. Robert Coury - Mylan - $22.9M
7. Kevin Sharer - Amgen - $21.1M
8. James Mullen - Biogen Idec - $20M
9. John Lechleiter - Eli Lilly - $16.5M
10. John Martin - Gilead Sciences - $14.2M

Nanoo, not to mention paying those CEO's

I'm sure they're really savvy guys though and I have no doubt they personally will cure cancer for that type of salary...

Uhm, yeah. These poor guys are just flat broke...

CEO pay in the US is obscene and immoral. Was one of the problems I had hoped a massive recession would resolve....they haven't learned anything.

I'd like to do something to their balls...

Oh, but they're about to learn it...the hard way.

Comrade Kristina wrote:

I'd like to do something to their balls..

I can help make it lasting. can I help?

Easy ladies, those are sensitive areas

Americans are out to lunch on the CEO wage problem. We ooo and aah over the 200mil baseball player, but we fail to grock how our adoration supports the 30mil a year figurehead at a multinational.

Jesse's Café Américain: Moyers Journal: How Did the Big Banks Get So Powerful?

Oh you would be good at it, Nanoo! We could get Pearl to talk to them while we administer their punishment. I'm sure they'd repent, quickly

Comrade Kristina wrote:

I'm sure they'd repent, quickly Laughing out loud

I smell :pig: coming soon. We've been bad, bad girls. Pearl is perfect...then we can do things they can't even imagine.

RayOnTheFarm wrote:

Sound like Tang may make a comeback.

[poon] Tang never goes out of style...

Black Star Ranch wrote:

Can someone again explain to this rather simple individual WHY food and energy is always excluded?

Answer: Food and energy has at times moved like a roller coaster car.

Food and energy are extremely volatile. That means, a sudden spike (or drop) is NOT a strong indicator of what happens in the coming months. The reason they gather and present BOTH numbers is because while they actually don't want to completely ignore food and energy, neither do they want to jump and panic at every transient market spasm.

While it would be extremely convenient if every statistic would present itself in nice, slow, steady, easy-to-follow trends, that's not how life works. If you are planning on using data for potentially setting national policy, then the data needs to be as good as you can get it. But, it'll never be perfect. But, if OJ futures spike because Florida had a one-in-a-century weather disaster ... that's going to impact OJ this year ... but next year, the price may (and often does) return to precisely what it used to be. The consumer may switch from OJ to Cranberry Juice for a year ... but policy should NOT be overly influenced by such types of fluctuations.

So ... since you KNOW that food and energy have been historically volatile and impossible to project accurately (over small time periods), you want to seperate it out, so you can attempt to discern transient events (which policy will have no impact on), from long-term effects, where policy changes might be in order.

Tellin' Barry where to go...

Video: Allen West, Obama “Get the Hell Out of the USA”! - Impeach Obama Campaign | Impeach Obama Campaign

Comrade Kristina wrote:

just get it over it with.

Oh no, every step you take, every breath you take-it will trouble you.

RockyR wrote:

Food and energy price increases never fully make it back into core. companies base their wage increases on core, so the wage component of final price doesn't reflect inflation from food and energy.

I thought that food and energy prices are affected by the weather A drought will raise prices because the supply is unexpectedly cut not because of a change in productivity and can't be made up until the next planting season. Energy prices are also determined in part by the cartel behavior of OPEC.

The new giant sucking sound you'll be hearing is all our foodstuffs being exported to the highest bidder. Bought any red or white meats lately? Hamburger @ $4.99 lb, chicken @ 3.59, a loaf of bread is $3.09.
And just what do you think keystone is all about? Pumping tarsands oil to the gulf for export. They were hoping to time it's completion with the new and enlarged Panama canal (now owned by the red chinese army incoporated). Oh, we'd get to refine a little deisel for south america, but that's about it.
But none of this is core cpi, so all is good.

So is Precious, yet its price is widely used as an inflation indicator.

Wife had to buy a smaller pan to cook brownies , the brownie mix box got smaller.

Cinco-X wrote:

Irish minister: hard to stay in euro if treaty rejected - Yahoo! Finance

... only somewhat related: Bespoke Investment Group - Think BIG - Which of These Charts is Not Like the Other?

The TRUTH About The Massive Plunge In The Baltic Dry Index

Instantly you can see a couple things.

The first is that the current decline is nothing like the declines we saw the last time the global economy went into recession in 2008. You should also see, hopefully, that this index is VOLATILE.

Baltic dry 702 -24

OT (unless you live in Greece),

BBC News - Greeks reject 'impossible' German plan for budget veto

Charles Dallara and Jean Lemierre, representing the creditors, said on Saturday they were "close to the finalisation" of a deal that would see banks and investors write off about 50% of money they are owed.

RayOnTheFarm wrote:

BBC News - Greeks reject 'impossible' German plan for budget veto

The Troika vs Greece | Felix Salmon

The Mayor Of London Thinks The Euro Is 'Wonderful' For Germany, And A 'Nightmare' For Everyone Else
Does the mayor read HCN?

sum luk wrote:

... only somewhat related: Bespoke Investment Group - Think BIG - Which of These Charts is Not Like the Other?

Holy Cow, Portuguese Bonds!

ROBERT SHILLER: A Housing Bottom? What Are They Thinking?

Indeed, RIF!

My various short positionns are quite green today, but reaching breakeven looks quite challenging.

IIRC, CPI is tied to core inflation. Accordingly, it would be in the interest of the government to have a core inflation that is relatively low.

Are health care and education included in the calculation of core inflation?

Did this get linked yet?

Obama's energy plan: The winners, and winners - Jan. 30, 2012

Coal and nuclear: These are the only two fuels that didn't garner an outright mention. Yet analysts say they are not unloved.
Bipartisan Policy Center's Bledsoe said the administration is on track to give the final OK on an $8 billion loan guarantee for a new nuclear plant in Georgia sometime in the next few weeks.

And other stuff.

Is this why oil dropped this morning? ha.

WomenOfHistory Inspirational Quotes
Well behaved women seldom make history.

Just a reminder for the girls here

Comrade Kristina wrote:

Well behaved women seldom make history.

Then I should already be famous! DANG.

Nanoo-Nanoo wrote:

The problem is for those of us who really must put food in our bellies and get from point A to point B-is the volatility many times doesn't return to its 'mean' over a years time.

Correct. But the key word there is "many".

Here's an interest gas price chart: Gas_Chart 

Peaked at $4.12 in August of 2008. Plunged all the way to $1.61 by December of '08.

Peaked at around $3.90 last May ... and plunged back to around $3.25 by year end.

If you're only going to make your COLA adjustments once per year, exactly what number are you supposed to use? There isn't a simple answer. In the '70s, before they redid the CPI calculation, many of the Unions used the govt. CPI numbers to compute annual Cost of Living Allowances ... and the change in CPI would then create wage inflation in those industries, (auto industry was one), which would then lead to an increase in car costs, which would then increase CPI ... etc., etc., etc.

Hey, I get the cynicism. I really do. But, having lived through the gas lines and the double-digit inflation and the 20% interest rates, I'm inclined to believe that today's figures are likely more helpful than the ones from the '70s. Compared to the '70s, when the price of a McDonald's hamburger went from 18 cents to 43 cents in about 10 years ... the last 10 years, the same burger has been priced at 89 cents for roughly the last 10 ... I'll gladly take today's inflation rates ... and todays govt. CPI as being more accurate and more helpful.

SHILLER: It depends what you mean by fair value. If you take account of the very low interest rates, you might think that housing prices should be higher than historically. But then on the other hand, that model hasn't worked very well historically.

I think has also made this argument regarding stocks -- that historically low interest rates haven't correlated with stocks selling at a premium (e.g. Japan in recent years).

Trader - by that same token, auto prices are influenced by tsunamis and iPhone prices are affected by the corruption of intergovernmental trade practices.

Former Idealist wrote:

Banksters can't mark them thar boats to market. You know why.

Gold Man Sacks parks those full oil tankers for the good of all 'Mericans, dammit!

Cpi more helpful, rocky more poorer.

It's just a phone.

multinational CEO much richer

JimPortlandOR wrote:

Looking at CRs chart, I could be convinced we are at the top of the hill where the roller coast falls of the edge and plunges into a tunnel.

If consumer spending starts to fall not much else is going to matter economically.

RD isn't around, so I can moan about this:

Dropping 10 yr. yields and STILL my lender's 30 yr. fixed rate is stuck at 3.99, no pts.

Required Net Yield (RNY)

Outsider wrote:

Dropping 10 yr. yields and STILL my lender's 30 yr. fixed rate is stuck at 3.99, no pts.

I seemed to recall a period in the past few years were treasury yields were going down and mortgage rates were going up.

Outsider wrote:

Dropping 10 yr. yields and STILL my lender's 30 yr. fixed rate is stuck at 3.99, no pts.

Somebody's got to pay for the eventual refi of everybody into the same 3.99% loan. If you don't charge those with high default risk more, what's left to do?

ac wrote:

iPhones transcend reality. They make examples of you.

In 21st century USSA, Jobs created you!

There's a point where lenders cannot simply drop rates further, especially if those lenders are keeping the loans on the books.

Banks still lend long and borrow short.

Hmmm so productivity should be the litmus test for payscale. Interesting...if that were true why then did pay not rise at all while productivity skyrocketed for the past couple decades? Any ideas? Where did the money saved go? Any ideas? It didn't go to the workers, this is a FACT.

Comrade Kristina wrote:

Welfare Drug Testing Bill Withdrawn After Amended To Include Testing Lawmakers

coke don't count, yo! it's a drug for rich people.

I see the Fed is trying to provide more clarity re: interest rates/monetary policy.

burnside wrote:

It's just a phone.

Made in China by an American company.

Cat Daddy wrote:

Made in China by an American company.

Help keep America STRONG!

Cat Daddy wrote:

Made in China by an American company

And shipped back to America.