The Solution to Inflation

President Biden and his cohorts in Congress and at the Federal Reserve have delivered an early Christmas present.  They’ve given Americans the gift of raging price inflation.  The cost of just about everything has gone through the roof.

Consumer prices, as measured by the consumer price index (CPI), have increased 6.8 percent over the last year.  This marks the largest 12 month surge since the period ending June 1982.  In truth, the CPI is rising at more than double the rate of what’s officially reported.

Can the Fed stop raging price inflation without triggering a deep recession?

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers doesn’t think so.

Summers, if you didn’t know, has an axe to grind.  He always fancied he’d be Federal Reserve chairman one day.  But he’s too much of a dirty fellow to ever get the job.

Summers is better suited to the ivory tower of Harvard academia.  There, sequestered from public life, he can play Fed chairman from the ease of his lounger.  He’s good at it.

Summers is also a paid contributor to Bloomberg.  For entertainment purposes, Bloomberg makes a habit of dripping out utterance from Summers when the time is right. Continue reading

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The Joy of Stealing

I’ve been caught stealing
Once, when I was five
I enjoy stealing
It’s just as simple as that

Well, it’s just a, simple fact
When I want something,
And I don’t want to pay for it

I walk right, through the door
Walk right through the door
Hey all right!
If I get by, it’s mine
Mine all mine!

Been Caught Stealing, by Jane’s Addiction

“No Cause for Alarm”

Robbery.  Theft.  Stealing.  These actions take many different forms.

There’s fraud.  There’s force.  There’s white collar theft.  There’s crafty pickpockets.  House burglaries.  Insurance swindles.  Breaking and entering (B&E).  Hanoi-style.  Credit card scams.  Government kickbacks.  Hold ups.  Carjacking.  Embezzlement.  And much, Much More…

They all generally roll up to the same thing.  Taking another person’s property (including money) without permission or legal right. Continue reading

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The Upshots of the New Housing Bubble Fiasco

“The free market for all intents and purposes is dead in America.” – Senator Jim Bunning, September 19, 2008

House Prices Go Vertical

The epic housing bubble and bust in the mid-to-late-2000s was dreadfully disruptive for many Americans.  Some never recovered.  Now the central planners have done it again…

On Tuesday, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) released its U.S. House Price Index (HPI) for September.  According to the FHFA HPI, U.S. house prices rose 18.5 percent from the third quarter of 2020 to the third quarter of 2021.

By comparison, consumer prices have increased 6.2 from a year ago.  That’s running hot!  But 6.2 percent consumer price inflation is nothing.  House prices have inflated nearly 3 times as much over this same period.

Here in the Los Angeles Basin, for example, things are so out of whack you have to be rich to afford a 1,200 square foot fixer upper in a modest area.  Yet the clever fellows in Washington have just the solution. Continue reading

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Hey, St. Louis Fed!… Go Tofurkey Yourself!

The maniacs at the Federal Reserve are working overtime to wreck your Thanksgiving feast.  What gives?

Raging price inflation – the worst since the 1970s – is a direct result of the Fed’s program of mass dollar debasement.  Specifically, the Fed has expanded its balance sheet by $5 trillion since September 2019.

This $5 trillion, remember, was created out of thin air.  No soil was overturned.  No widget was fabricated.  No technology was discovered.  The Fed made a ledger notation and the money magically appeared.

Yet all this printing press money from the Fed has a serious defect; there’s no production behind it.  And if you follow the money you find that much of the $5 trillion was loaned to the Treasury.  From there, this fake money was spent into the economy like real money…where it chases the price of goods and services higher.

The fake money cycles through the economy as if it were the real thing.  Grocers accept it.  Dog walkers too.  But the fake money represents no increase in actual wealth.  It merely pushes prices higher.  Unrestrained Fed money printing also sparked an epic supply chain crisis and rife shortages of consumer goods…and further price inflation. Continue reading

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