We are colonized by wankers.

It's a SHITE state of affairs to be in, Tommy.

Rudy Havenstein

Jul 14, 2022

Your income is never hedonically-adjusted higher.

What a goofball:

*Imagine Justin talking like this at a supermarket.*

By Justin’s logic, 100% inflation would be the optimal level, or maybe 1 million percent, or something.

It’s batshit crazy, and it is mainstream economic thinking. I’m the crank.

Inflation is the most regressive tax, and I bet Justin considers himself quite the progressive. That sort of cognitive dissonance always amazes me. (fyi I covered some of this typical economist “inflation is a good thing” bullshit recently in A Very Ordinary Life.)

Look at Justin Wolfers’ bio - he’s just another very clever IYI academic economist of the pseudo-Keynesian type largely responsible for much of what’s gone wrong with America’s economy over the last few decades (setting the bloodthirsty warmongers aside for a moment.)

Wolfers makes good money and has great pensions and all the elites love him, and, like Yellen and Bernanke, he will never be homeless, no matter how badly his type of economic policies work out for the other 330 million Americans, or at least those that aren’t worth 8-figures.

Eisenhower warned us in 1961 that - besides the warmongers - we must “be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

Well, that happened.

We are colonized by wankers.

**“Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?” - John Lydon**

Justin reminds me of fellow horrible person Bill Dudley, one Goldman Sachs’ many Fed moles:

Dudley's day went south when he was pressed by several audience members about how he can view inflation as low when things such as grocery prices are marching higher. One participant asked "when was the last time, sir, you went grocery shopping?" The central banker told the audience "I certainly acknowledge food prices have gone up." But he added some prices are lower and noted "Today you can buy an iPad 2 that costs the same as an iPad 1, that's twice as powerful," as an example of favorable price dynamics. His example was greeted with widespread grumbling in the audience, in a display of conspicuous discontent unusual for a Fed speaking event.

Note that this was in March 2011, when official (i.e., nonsense) CPI was running at 2.6%.

If you think that’s bad, check this out from 2017: Fed’s Dudley: Hurricanes will boost economic activity over the long run. What a sociopath.

These are the types of people running the show.

We need to stop them. Call your Congressperson.

And then there’s Paul Krugman, December 2021: “Is there any good reason to believe that inflation hits low-income households especially hard?” Finger on the pulse these guys…

Maybe quit sending kids to the colleges that hire goofballs like Wolfers and Krugman to fill their brains with mush (with annual tuitions that cost as much as what used to be the price of a starter home.)

Wolfers is getting roasted on the Twitter, even without me there. The general public is fed up with academic economists’ smug cluelessness.

Speaking of wankers…

Warren Buffett, 1977: How inflation swindles the equity investor (archive.org is slow)

Below is how economists - in this case at the BLS - actually think, and why CPI is way below the actual "cost of living." They live in another world, a world of math geek models.

For kicks, print this out and take it with you next time you go men's shirt shopping.

So the Producer Price Index by Commodity: Final Demand (PPIFID) number came out today at 11.3% YOY, which is no problem because the real mortgage on your Hamptons vacation home went down, or something (I’m clearly not an economist like Justin Wolfers.)

I noticed, though, that this data series (the one that made the headlines) only went back 2009. So there is another data series, Producer Price Index by Commodity: Final Demand: Finished Goods, that goes back to 1948. Let’s see how that one looks…

Oh dear. That one doesn’t look so good. I’m glad they went with the other one.

So I saw the “Dollar Surges To Record High” headlines today, and yes, a record if history began in 2005.

If you go back to the 1980’s, the similar but different DXY index looks like this:

“3AC borrowed hundreds of millions from user's deposits through custodial agents like Voyager and BlockFi, and used it to recklessly gamble on all kinds of ridiculous crypto things, including "CryptoDickButt" NFT.” Priceless.
Former JPMorgan employees ‘scammed the metals market’, prosecutors say I am shocked - shocked! Nobody ever brings this up on CNBC, but a reminder that JPMorgan has had “five criminal felony counts brought by the U.S. Department of Justice over the past 7 years.” Note that this is during a period where white collar crime - at the JPMorgan level - is almost never criminally prosecuted.
Wall Street’s Ongoing Crime Spree
Most of the loans on recently repossessed cars originated during 2020 and 2021…he says he has never seen so many people making $2,500 a month owing $1,000 a month in car payments.
Housing Costs Drive More People to Move Back In With Their Parents
Powell was right!

So I saw that Trump called Musk a “bullshit artist,” and was reminded of this…

Classic California Government in Action: Beginning in 2006, the state, focused on how to incentivize people to take up solar power, showered subsidies on homeowners who installed photovoltaic panels but had no comprehensive plan to dispose of them. Now, panels purchased under those programs are nearing the end of their 25-year lifecycle. Many are already winding up in landfills, where components that contain toxic heavy metals such as selenium and cadmium can contaminate groundwater.

It’s a bit like how global central bankers monetized $30 trillion of bonds with no plan to ever normalize: Central banks are starting to shrink their balance sheets, but fund managers say they have no clue as to how QT will play out