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Sunday, March 23, 2008

...Something Inflationary This Way Comes.

From The Asia Times

A bunch of government gobbledy-gook By The Mogambo Guru ...the latest estimate of M3 money supply by John Williams at shadowstats.com is that the damnable Federal Reserve is creating and expanding the money supply at a rate of 16.9% a year, and beyond that it was "the highest monthly growth rate ever seen for the M3 series (the Federal Reserve's calculation of the broad money measure dates back to January 1959). " What makes this so surprising is that "The prior record monthly annual growth for M3 was 16.4% in June 1971, and the inflation from excessive money creation at the time was a key factor pressuring the greenback, leading up to president [Richard] Nixon's closing the gold window and imposing wage and price controls in August of that year." Not surprisingly, then, he says, "The current surge in broad money supply growth has equally ominous implications for monetary inflation and dollar pressures during the next nine to 12 months, well into 2009." Yes. Wage and Price controls. I lived through those. How soon we forget. You know, with all this blather about free markets, one forgets that Bear Stern is actually a bail-out and there were wage and price controls less than 40 years ago. If I read all this aright, the savings of most people will be destroyed. My father-in-law attended school in Bremerhaven, Germany after World War I. His family lived outside the town in a rural area and he took the trolley to school. One day, he had to walk home, because the trolley fare had infl;ated so much between the morning ride and the afternoon that he no longer had enough money to pay for a ticket. Sweet memories soon to be revisited. I seem to recall that I wrote here about Vampire Economics, which is in its very essence just a scheme or ruse that allows ME the right to do things at YOUR expense. That is certainly what is going on now: a war being fought on credit! An unpopular war no one seems able or willing to stop. And an election which day by day seems more certain to elect a fellow who believes that a century or two in Iraq is just what the doctor ordered. ...And this anticipated inflation is already here, as the annualized, "SGS Alternate Consumer Inflation" for February was 11.6%, and the annualized inflation for the previous three months were also the same horrific 11.7% (November), 11.7% (December) and 11.8% (January). I caught on shopping for green peppers. Green peppers used to be $ 0.79 per pound and the fancy and colorful red, orange, and yellow peppers were about $ 1.70 per pound as recently as four months ago. Now green peppers are at the old fancy pepper rate and the colored ones are $ 2.70 per pound. And the prices for Easter were rather shocking. It is a good thing I get my lamb at Hassan Brothers. Next year, perhaps I shall only be able to afford the goat. Thank goodness gas is cheap. Now, beyond inflation, what you will learn from the above article is the duplicitous manner by which politicians have conspired to "adjust" economic measurements and figures in order to be able to gild the perfidious lily and make a sow's ear look like a silk purse. ...I am happy to report that Mr Williams kindly does respond to requests from subscribers, and is now introducing the SGS-Alternate Unemployment Rate, which sounds like a bunch of government gobbledy-gook, which it actually is, as it takes the Labor Department's measure of unemployment known as U6, which he says was at 8.9% as of February, and "adjusts" it by adding back "an estimate of the millions of discouraged workers defined away during the Clinton administration - those who had been 'discouraged' for more than one year." ...he said that the result of his work is that the first SGS-Alternate estimate of unemployment is a horrifying 12.8% for February! Suddenly, I am not hungry anymore. 12.8% unemployment! Roughly half the rate at the depths of the Great Depression! We know things are tough. They may get tougher. However, no one will raise taxes, no one will stop the wars, no one will control inflation... A generation of vampires is about to breath its last! The New Generation:

We owe HOW MUCH !!??

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