Online gauge had been showing hot inflation

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/billio ... atest_news

"The MIT research team behind the BPP briefly posted an announcement on its website last week that they would no longer publish the BPP country indexes, but would publish a world index in its place. It mentioned that they were working on a deal with a partner to resume publication of the country indexes. The announcement said that the country indexes were just too much work (I’m paraphrasing here), and that the team had more important economic research to tend to. This is like a politician quitting to “spend more time with the family.”

Here in the US, people are saying inflation is being underreported by the Feds, but it is much more crazy in Argentina right now.
Private economists are saying the true inflation rate is 25%, but the govement says 10%. These economists are now being accused of lying and are being fined over 100K each.

Are you saying that economists would lie? Would scientists, Politicians? Oh no, what is this world coming to?

Index or no index, consumer prices are rising and virtually everyone knows it. Politics didn't cause it, but politicians sure have reasons to cover it up. And yes, BOTH sides of the aisle have motives to do that. Otherwise you'd be hearing a heck of lot more from the Right about inflation than you are. Not sure what motive MIT has, but maybe someone threatened to cut funding?

Politics didn't cause it

I'm not too sure about that. The lack of any kind of workable energy policy from the current administration at least contributed to the dramatic rise in the price of oil, and then via domino effect, to everything else.

Then how do you account for the fact that consumer prices (including oil) are rising worldwide, not just in the U.S.? If it was just a matter of a domestic energy policy that wouldn't explain the worldwide increases in grains and other food crops, cotton, metals, and a host of other commodities.

Perhaps because we are by far the largest consumer of energy in the world? The lack of energy policy is certainly not the only culprit but it is there. The largest culprit is obviously the wild printing press mentality of the Federal Reserve.

Rising oil prices are a symptom. Wild currency printing is a symptom. These are not causes.

towermonkey wrote:

Politics didn't cause it

I'm not too sure about that. The lack of any kind of workable energy policy from the current administration at least contributed to the dramatic rise in the price of oil, and then via domino effect, to everything else.

Oil is going up because the dollar is going down.

Just a little personal observation about inflation.

I keep running tabs of a hypothetical "grocery cart" of common commodity items like bulk rice, flour, oil, dried beans.

My hypothetical basket has risen in price by almost 20% since October. That's an annualized inflation rate of 40%. Here's one example from that basket:

Riceland Extra Long Grain Rice, 50 lbs - price on October 10, 2010 at Sam's Club - $13.24

Riceland Extra Long Grain Rice, 50 lbs - price on April 25, 2011 at Sam's Club - $17.59

That's a 33% increase. It probably isn't as obvious when people are buying smaller items more frequently, especially since producers have been "shrinking" their package sizes in hopes of people not noticing the increases so much. But when I see a 20% increase in a basket of "basics" like rice, flour, oil, beans in just six months, it's pretty obvious to me there is serious, serious inflation brewing out there. Food prices have been relatively cheap for some time so most families can absorb this for a limited time before busting their budgets. And it's also a fact that most people don't buy "basic" foods, they buy mostly processed stuff. It takes longer for price increases to show up in that kind of product because they have more ways of manipulating things, and often the "basic" ingredients are the least costly in the package. But show up they will, sooner or later.

With gas creeping higher and higher, and now food, I wonder how long before we see real economic pain even among those who have been lucky enough to hang on to their jobs?