Hyper­in­fla­tion Spe­cial Report (2011) [Shadow Gov­ern­ment Sta­tis­tics]

A detailed look at what’s likely to hap­pen to the econ­omy in the near future. The site where this is posted takes var­i­ous promi­nent government-published sta­tis­tics that are widely accepted as reflect­ing the state of the econ­omy, and deter­mines what they would be based on the way the gov­ern­ment used to cal­cu­late them in the past before chang­ing them to hide the true eco­nomic sit­u­a­tion from the chumps voters.

I came across this old post, writ­ten over six years ago on my old weblog:

Infla­tion con­tin­ues to fall as buy­ers keep the pres­sure up on sell­ers. This also means that a 3–4% wage increase this year and a 10% increase in hous­ing prices will have a major impact on real per­sonal income and wealth. Another three years of this and we will have repli­cated the gains in real per­sonal wealth over the last two decades (for most Amer­i­cans — this is in con­trast to the rapid stock mar­ket dri­ven gains over the last 20 years for the nation’s wealth­i­est indi­vid­u­als). Nice. [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]

There are some prob­lems with this the­ory. The most glar­ing is that he’s treat­ing infla­tion as syn­ony­mous with some vague sta­tis­tic about con­sumer prices. In fact, infla­tion is an increase in the sup­ply of money–this may lead to an increase in prices, or it may not, depend­ing on other fac­tors. The US has been inflat­ing its money sup­ply for years with­out prices going up much, because we send the money over­seas to pay for import goods. That can only work as long as over­seas sell­ers are will­ing to accept the dol­lars (or have no choice).

The hous­ing price increase is the result of another bub­ble. The Fed­eral Reserve is still inflat­ing the money sup­ply, but now instead of the money going into smoke-and-mirror “dot com” stocks, it’s going into real estate. This is bad for any­one buy­ing a house now, because when the bub­ble bursts, they’ll be stuck with a house worth less than what they paid for it, but their mort­gage pay­ments will reflect the inflated price.

To me, that’s even worse than los­ing money buy­ing lot­tery tick­ets dis­guised as stocks. At least you can just accept your loss and move on, instead of being stuck either mak­ing exces­sive pay­ments for 30 years on a house or else going through the has­sle of sell­ing it at a loss.

When I wrote that, it hadn’t occurred to me that those house buy­ers could legally walk away, but as it turns out they could.

Obama-Mania.

Larken Rose has penned yet another essay in his TMDS series (The Most Dan­ger­ous Super­sti­tion: the belief in imposed author­ity). He explains what col­lec­tivism is, why it always leads to vio­lence, and why Obama, McCain, and every other Repub­li­can and Demo­c­rat can­di­date are all collectivists.

[End the War on Free­dom]

It’s a good, and lengthy, arti­cle that cov­ers some of the same ground as The Road to Serf­dom. The fol­low­ing is from his conclusion:

Bar­rack Obama is a col­lec­tivist. Despite the usual window-dressing
and euphemisms which con­ceal the true nature of what he advo­cates,
he is, in every way, an advo­cate for the idea that every indi­vid­ual–
and all wealth–is the prop­erty of the col­lec­tive, as rep­re­sented
by “gov­ern­ment.” In other words, he believes in communism.

So should every­one vote for John McCain? No. Mr. McCain is also a
col­lec­tivist. In fact, with very rare excep­tions, ALL Demo­c­rat and
Repub­li­can politi­cians are col­lec­tivists, as they have been for
many decades, even back when they were feign­ing con­cern about the
“spread of com­mu­nism.” So why did I focus on Obama? Because, unlike
Mr. McCain, Mr. Obama seems to have a lot of enthu­si­as­tic sup­port
from well-meaning, albeit mis­guided, Amer­i­cans. As with Bill
Clin­ton, Mr. Obama makes the advo­cacy of wide­spread gov­ern­ment
vio­lence, theft and oppres­sion sound both noble and use­ful. It is
not.

So if all of the above was not intended to make you vote for
someone–and it cer­tainly was not–then what is being sug­gested?
Intel­lec­tual hon­esty. First, I want peo­ple to under­stand what the
self-proclaimed “lead­ers” are actu­ally propos­ing, because it is not
“hope,” or “change,” or “progress,” or any of the other vague, feel–
good rhetoric being fed to the gen­eral pub­lic. It is what EVERY
gov­ern­ment “leader” always pro­poses: more power for the state, less
free­dom for the peo­ple. They pre­tend to have the purest motives for
it, but the means to their goals will ALWAYS be less free­dom for
you, and more power for them.

After peo­ple real­ize that, next I want them to be hon­est about
their OWN beliefs and agenda. If, for exam­ple, you sup­port any of
the col­lec­tivist redis­tri­b­u­tion plans and pro­grams pitched by both
major par­ties, then I sim­ply ask that you drop the cha­rade, set
aside the euphemisms and obfus­ca­tions, and do it openly and
hon­estly. If you believe that there is some­one some­where whose
sup­posed “need” enti­tles him to what my time and effort have
pro­duced, with or with­out my con­sent, then pick up a gun, come to
my house, and take it from me your­self. Don’t hide such destruc­tive
evil behind elec­tions, leg­is­la­tion, and polit­i­cal rhetoric. Do it
openly and hon­estly, or don’t do it at all. If you give your vote
to ANY col­lec­tivist, you are just as guilty of rob­bing me, and
rob­bing a cou­ple hun­dred mil­lion other peo­ple, as if you had done
it your­self. But in addi­tion to being a thief, you’d also be a
fraud and a cow­ard, because you lie (maybe even to your­self) about
what it is you advo­cate, and don’t have the spine to go do it
yourself.