[Last_Historian]

What do the folk here of the site http://www.shadowstats.com/ ? Do you reckon John Williams is on the ball?

Basically the argument is that since Reagan, and particularly from the 1990's, inflation has been systematically understated due to liberal use of substitution and hedonic adjustment. This in fact would imply that if the BLS hadn't worked the definitions, US GDP has been in stagnation or decline since the early 1990's. However, there have been doubts as to the validity of the methodology he uses (http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/200 ... s_res.html).

Of course there are other studies claiming the exact opposite, that inflation is understated (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boskin_Commission).

Since economic stagnation and ultimately decline and possibly collapse are likely to occur due to the effects of peak oil and diminishing EROEI, this should be a valid and useful topic for discussion.

So two questions for consideration:

1) What are your opinions on this issue? If inflation overstated, understated or roughly accurate, or are all economic measures becoming increasingly meaningless to gaging quality of life due to unsustainability and ecological degradation?

2) If the US is cooking its stats, what about other countries? To what extend do European nations and Japan do it? China, Russia, India, Brazil, the other emerging nations, etc?

[pedalling_faster]

it's pretty obvious that US inflation numbers are thoroughly massaged/ cooked.

i think John Williams does good work. i listened to him interviewed at
http://www.financialsense.com/fsn/main.html

he's good at explaining economics, in addition to being an economist.

my impression is that he's using unemployment & inflation counting methods that were used when he worked in the government, earlier in his career. i remember one interview where he explained how the procedure for counting unemployed people has changed over the years.

[pablonite]

Here is an article you might be interested in...

Towards an Inflationary Depression
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14030

As far as your questions go one thing is certain, all governments cook their books to some degree but the only way you would know to what extent is to be your typical politician living in the back pocket of some shadowy puppet master. To answer your first question, these politicians live a nice life. They can take care of their families and friends and easily get into the revolving door game landing a nice job in the private sector where most of them came from to begin with. Call it whatever you want but the goal is and always has been the concentration of wealth and power.

It is why "business cycles" were created to begin with. You can spend your whole life getting mucked up in their economic jargon and follow their game but it all comes right into focus when you just step back and ask yourself a very simple question. When living in a society where something as important as money is created out of nothing by banks, should we then go ahead and trust these banks not to make more money then they should?

Welcome to "economics" on planet earth, a complete cesspool of corruption

[The_Toecutter]

The "Real" current global economy. The price of everything ESSENTIAL is going up. Food, gas, electricity and (here in a wet UK) water.
The price of everything UNESSENTIAL is falling. TV sets, autos, shit from China etc. In between these is Housing. An essential, but prices falling. But thats sale prices. If you have a mortgage, that is increasing, yet we have historically LOW interest rates on savings. The bastards have us all stiched up.

If you rent, the price is also going up, even though the value of the property is declining.

$400/month is about the cheapest you will find for an inner-city slumlord apartment; adjusted for inflation, this could have gotten you a decent 2 bedroom house in the '60s.

I hope I don't lose my job in this economy. I would rather like being able to afford all of these cheap goods for the ole' doomstead(tools, vehicles, guns, food), never mind the doomstead to keep them in...