Psssssssssssst, hey, suckers: forget ZOG lies & prop. about "inflation"--purchasing power has dropped 34% just since 2020, u poor, brainless morons

[Apollonian]

Govt Inflation # is BS -Never Mind Bogus Measures of Inflation–Purchasing Power Is What Counts, and It’s Decaying–minus 34 % since 2020​

December 1, 2023 2:30 pm by CWR
Authored by Charles Hugh-Smith via oftwominds,

Link: https://citizenwatchreport.com/govt...-counts-and-its-decaying-minus-34-since-2020/

If your earnings rose by 34% from January 2020 to October 2023, congratulations, the purchasing power of your labor kept pace with higher costs.
Official measures of inflation are a long-running tragi-comedy: comedic in the transparency of the distortions, and tragic in the consequences: what will you believe is true–the statistics or your lying eyes?

The basic gimmick of distortion is to underweight whatever is eating away at the purchasing power of earnings and highlight the trivial items that are getting cheaper due to declines in quality and globalization. So your rent went up by $200 a month, or $2,400 a year, but since TVs dropped $40 and toys dropped $20, inflation is only 3%. So stop feeling poorer, everything’s great! Inflation is dropping!
You see the problem: the scale of spending on essentials such as shelter, healthcare, childcare, etc. is far greater than the trivial “lower in price” items. If 95% of your essential spending is rising in cost, trivial declines in the 5% of discretionary spending do not offset the gargantuan declines in purchasing power.
The chart below reflects this distortion. Essential expenses that cost thousands of dollars annually consume far more of our earnings now, and these vast declines in the purchasing power of earnings are not offset by the occasional purchase of cheaper TVs.
The only accurate measure of increasing or decreasing costs is purchasing power: how many hours of work does it take to pay housing, taxes, college tuition, healthcare, childcare, etc., then and now. The official measures of inflation use gimmicks to distort the staggering drop in purchasing power by claiming the quality of stuff has increased by extraordinary leaps and bounds. So the fact that cars have rear cameras offsets the fact that it takes far more hours of labor to buy a car now than it did a few decades ago.
See also "Why is everything so expensive?"... Inflation has decreased from last year, signifying a slower rate of price increase rather than a decline in prices.

Measuring purchasing power eliminates these distortions, which is why nobody measures purchasing power: once we calculate costs in terms of hours worked, we recognize that a much larger percentage of our labor / earnings is devoted to paying for essentials. Simply put, we’re getting less value for our labor.
Pundits tend to overlook the fundamental sources of declining purchasing power. These include:

1. Decay of gains reaped from globalization. Stripped of corporate PR, globalization is the ruthless exploitation of as-yet unexploited pools of cheap labor and resources. This exploitation yields enormous gains at first and then these gains decay as wages rise and the easy-to-get resources are depleted.

The dependence on foreign sources for essentials has also been revealed as a national security threat, and so the catch-phrase is “de-risking,” which means developing multiple sources of essentials.

2. Capital demanding higher returns due to soaring global risks. In the conventional view, the Federal Reserve chair waves a magic wand and lowers interest rates at will. It’s not quite that simple. All new debt–for example, Treasury bonds–must be purchased by capital, and if risks are rising, capital demands a risk premium to offset the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns, both of which are proliferating rapidly.
If capital is no longer willing to accept low yields, yields have to rise regardless of central bank policy, and this drags interest rates higher. Yes, central banks can create currency out of thin air and use this free money to buy Treasury bonds, but ballooning the money supply has its own consequences:

3. Increasing the money supply to maintain a sclerotic, unproductive status quo generates a decline in the purchasing power of currency. Throwing trillions of new units of currency around doesn’t magically mean production of goods and services increase, or the quality and quantity of items increase. It just diminishes the value of existing units of currency.

See also Aussie Sen. Malcolm Roberts: ‘Klaus Schwab’s “Life by Subscription” Is Really Serfdom; It’s Slavery’ [VIDEO]

4. Global scarcities crimp supply, pushing up costs. Humans have a very high opinion of themselves, but fundamentally we’re like rabbits (or rats, if you prefer) let loose on an island without predators. Like rabbits, we proliferate and consume more per rabbit until the resources have been consumed. Then we wonder why scarcities arise. But AI, blah-blah-blah. AI can’t restore depleted soil or reverse droughts.

5. Soaring entitlements must be paid for with higher taxes. Promises made decades ago in different conditions require ever greater resources must be skimmed by governments. Creating money out of thin air isn’t a solution (see #3 above) and so the government must collect a greater share of income and wealth. The more taxes we pay, the less we have left to spend on essentials and discretionary purchases.

This is a global dynamic. Global entitlements and debt are both soaring.

If your earnings rose by 34% from January 2020 to October 2023, congratulations, the purchasing power of your labor kept pace with higher costs. All of us who aren’t earning 34% more since January 2020 have lost ground, i.e. purchasing power: it now takes more hours of work to buy groceries and everything else we need.

The official measure of inflation since January 2020 is up 19%. Whether that actually maps the decline in our purchasing power can be massaged–stop believing your lying eyes!–but what can’t be massaged away is the reality that costs are rising for structural reasons that aren’t going away.

 

[Apollonian]

Feds (controlled by globalist-satanists behind the US Federal Reserve Bank) are planning on INFLATION, suckers--that's what they're going to do--INFLATE, INFLATE, INFLATE--meaning, they're going to print, print, print more currency (not real money which must be gold/silver--see Mises.org; use their site search-engine for particular terms like "fiat-currency," etc.)--that's why they're telling people to get used to higher and higher prices--hyper-inflation, creating another crisis by which they want to extort the people to bringing-in CBDCs--digital currency.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

MSNBC: Americans Should Get Used To High Prices — Lower Cost of Living ‘A Bad Thing’​

by Jamie White
December 13th 2023, 1:23 pm

Link: https://www.infowars.com/posts/msnb...high-prices-lower-cost-of-living-a-bad-thing/

"People just have no experience with this, and they’re trying to wrap their minds around it and they’re taking it out on President Biden, which is not entirely fair at all."

The pundits on MSNBC are really putting the spin on Joe Biden’s inflationary economy.

Wall Street financier Steve Rattner appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Wednesday to argue that Americans should get used to rising prices and that a lower cost of living is actually “a bad thing.”

Yes, really.

“We definitely did have a lot of inflation moving through the system, which did raise food prices to a permanent level,” Rattner acknowledged.

MSNBC's @SteveRattner says Americans should get acclimated to always increasing prices, as a lower cost of living "is kind of a bad thing"
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 13, 2023

Rattner claimed that the high prices that emerged as a result of inflation will never go back down.

“Something like two-thirds of the people who are going to vote next year were not voting 30 years ago, the last time we had inflation over 4%. They’ve never seen inflation like this. This comes as a shock to them, and they – some of them at least kind of expect prices to go back down again to where they were before. That doesn’t happen,” he said.

Rattner went on to say that prices shouldn’t come back down anyway because lower prices, i.e. increased dollar purchasing power, is a “bad thing.”

“In fact, deflation is actually kind of a bad thing,” he said. “So, people just have no experience with this, and they’re trying to wrap their minds around it and they’re taking it out on President Biden, which is not entirely fair at all.”

Despite the media’s propaganda claiming the economy is doing well under Biden, the majority of Americans say rising prices are causing them financial hardship, according to a new Gallup poll.

And 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck in Biden’s economy, according to CNBC.

The corporate media’s disconnected elitism knows no bounds.

They really went with "Your puny mind can't comprehend the problem of cheaper groceries" https://t.co/STwGDq7xd5
— Auron MacIntyre (@AuronMacintyre) December 13, 2023

 

[Apollonian]

Trump Vows To "Never Allow" A Central Bank Digital Currency​

BY TYLER DURDEN
THURSDAY, JAN 18, 2024 - 05:11 AM

Link: https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/trump-vows-never-allow-central-bank-digital-currency/

[see vids at site link, above]

Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday vowed to never allow the use of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), as it would "give the government absolute control over your money."

"This would be a dangerous threat to freedom – and I will stop it from coming to America. We are also going to put in place strong protections to stop banks and regulators from trying to de-bank you for your political beliefs. That will never happen while I am your president," Trump told a crowd in Portsmouth, New Hampshire - as first reported by The National Pulse.

Trump's comments come hours after Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) revealed that federal agencies have been flagging financial transactions using politically sensitive words such as "MAGA" and "Trump" in yet another egregious example of the establishment targeting political rivals.
As we've reported for years, CBDCs - touted by globalists such as French Central Bank deputy governor Denis Beau as "the catalyst for improving cross-border payments by enabling the build-up of a new international monetary system" - are in fact the ultimate tools of oppression.
Even Fed Governors know 'this way lies danger':

"In thinking about the implications of CBDC and privacy, we must also consider the central role that money plays in our daily lives, and the risk that a CBDC would provide not only a window into, but potentially an impediment to, the freedom Americans enjoy in choosing how money and resources are used and invested," Federal Reserve Governor Michelle Bowman told a Harvard Law School Program on International Financial Systems last year.

Central bank digital currencies are part of a broader "war on cash."
A cashless society is sold on the promise of providing a safe, convenient, and more secure alternative to physical cash. We’re also told it will help stop dangerous criminals who like the intractability of cash.
But there is a darker side – the promise of control.
The elimination of cash creates the potential for the government to track and control consumer spending. Digital economies would also make it even easier for central banks to engage in manipulative monetary policies such as negative interest rates.
But they seem to be an inevitability, as according to data from the Atlantic Council CBDC Tracker, 130 countries - representing over 98% of global gross domestic product - are exploring or developing CBDCs, marking an outsized increase from just a few years ago.
Via cbdctracker.org
They're even starting to experiment with them for international settlement... In November, Zurich issued a CHF 100 million ($113m) digital bond via the SIX Digital Exchange - the most distinctive aspect of which is that it settles using a wholesale central bank digital currency (wholesale CBDC) issued by the Swiss National Bank (SNB).

Resistance!​

Last April, Democratic Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (who is now working to create a new political party to qualify for the ballot in various states), vehemently opposed the Fed's announcement of a "FedNow" CBDC, calling it a "slippery slope to financial slavery and political tyranny."

"While cash transactions are anonymous, a #CBDC will allow the government to surveil all our private financial affairs. The central bank will have the power to enforce dollar limits on our transactions restricting where you can send money, where you can spend it, and when money expires," he wrote on X. "A CBDC tied to digital ID and social credit score will allow the government to freeze your assets or limit your spending to approved vendors if you fail to comply with arbitrary diktats, i.e. vaccine mandates."

In July, Kennedy promised to back the US Dollar with Bitcoin if he's elected president.
Also in July, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) vowed to kill FedCoin on "day one" of his presidency, telling Tucker Carlson at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa, "If I am the president, on day one, we will nix central bank digital currency. Done. Dead. Not happening in this country," adding "They want to get rid of cash. They want no cryptocurrency. They want [CBDCs] to be the sole form of legal tender. It will allow them to prohibit 'undesirable purchases' like fuel and ammunition."

More recently, several states opposed to CBDC have launched bills which would prohibit classifying digital currency as money.
If successful, Utah, South Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee would become the first states to exclude CBDC as a medium exchange - potentially creating significant roadblocks to CBDC in the United States.
Finally, for those still unsure, we don’t need to look as far as China to understand the implications here in the West. As Laura Dodsworth wrote in October of the dystopian nature of CBDCs, via The Brownstone Institute:

In 2019, Mastercard and Doconomy launched a credit card with a carbon footprint calculator that can switch off your spending when you reach your carbon max. This functionality is voluntary, but it could be an automatic aspect of a CBDC.
Tom Mutton, a director at the Bank of England, said that the Government would be required to make the final decision on whether a UK CBDC should be programmable. Sir Jon Cunliffe, a deputy Governor at the Bank, said:

"You could think of giving your children pocket money, but programming the money so that it couldn’t be used for sweets. There is a whole range of things that money could do, programmable money, which we cannot do with the current technology."

As this quote reveals, CBDCs won’t just alter our relationship with money but with government. Governments around the world have shown increasingly authoritarian tendencies during the management of the Covid pandemic, and more recently to discourage driving in cities. Behavioural science has been leveraged to manipulate, incentivise and coerce us into behaving as model citizens. Do we want to negotiate with Daddy State to be allowed to spend our ‘pocket money’ as we wish?
An account-based CBDC would give the government enormous power over your money as your identity is connected to the money. A 2020 Bank of England discussion paper gave examples of programmability, for example that smart cars could automatically pay for fuel directly at the dispensing pump, with automated taxation and charitable donations at point of sale.
That all sounds very convenient. But politicians pushing Net Zero goals on an unwilling population could choose to go a step further. If you insist on keeping your private car, despite the inconvenient 20 MPH speed limits, the ULEZ and congestion charges, and the Low Traffic Neighbourhood barriers, they could simply dictate a maximum fuel spend in a given time period. Just ten of your Britcoins on petrol this month, Sir, no more driving for you.

Interestingly, we have not heard from the Biden administration with regard their support (or lack thereof) of CDBCs. Given their recent authoritarian over-steps, it shouldn't be too hard to guess which side of the 'more centralized power and control' vs 'freedom and personal sovereignty' fence they might come down on.

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[Apollonian]

Dollar Down 20% Since 2020, Biden Blames Greed​

BY TYLER DURDEN
WEDNESDAY, MAR 27, 2024 - 06:20 AM
Via SchiffGold.com,

Link: https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/dollar-down-20-2020-biden-blames-greed

Assuming CPI measurements are not understatements, the dollar’s value has plummeted by a staggering one-fifth since 2020, yet, rather than acknowledging its role in fueling this economic turmoil, the Biden administration deflects, casting capitalism and corporate greed as the villains. The latest February CPI data show more signs of the upcoming inflation bloodbath.


The following article was originally published by the Mises Institute. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Peter Schiff or SchiffGold.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest price inflation data, CPI inflation in February accelerated for the second month in a row, and price inflation hasn’t proven nearly as transitory as the regime’s economists have long predicted.
According to the BLS, Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose 3.2 percent year over year during February, without seasonal adjustment. That’s the thirty-sixth month in a row of inflation well above the Fed’s arbitrary 2 percent inflation target.
Month-over-month inflation accelerated, with the CPI rising 0.4 percent from January to February, with seasonal adjustment. Month-to-month growth had been 0.3 percent from December to January.

The ongoing price increases largely reflect growth in prices for food, services, electricity, and shelter.
For example, prices for “food away from home” were up 4.5 percent in February over the previous year. Gasoline prices fell 3.9 percent over the period, but electricity was up 3.6 percent. Prices for “services less energy services” rose 5.2 percent, year over year, while shelter rose 5.7 percent over the period.
Pulling out volatile energy and food prices, we find price inflation remains stubbornly high. So-called core CPI growth remains near four percent—double the “two-percent target”—keeping price inflation growth near thirty-year highs. In other words, core CPI is a long way from returning to “normal.” Moreover, February’s month-over-month increase hit 0.4 percent, which is the largest increase recorded in any month since April 2023.

Biden Blames Corporate Greed ​

In recent months, supporters of the current regime have repeatedly claimed that inflation is “falling” or otherwise rapidly disappearing. Paul Krugman has been one of the most vocal cheerleaders claiming the problem of price inflation is “solved.” The February numbers, however, have proven troublesome for this narrative because it is becoming increasingly clear that price inflation is not, in fact, rapidly disappearing. Rather, the month-to-month numbers suggest price inflation is growing.
Moreover, cumulative price inflation over the past four years has been enormous. The CPI increased by 19.9 percent from February 2020 to February 2024. In other words, assuming the CPI is correct—and isn’t low-balling the real extent of price inflation—the dollar has lost one-fifth of its value in just four years. This has been devastating for many savers and for those on fixed income.

The Biden administration’s response to this has been predictable in that the President has blamed “corporate greed” when the real causes are runaway deficit spending and the central bank’s easy-money policies.
Biden has repeatedly blamed the private sector for “price gouging” and so-called shrinkflation, which is the term for a reduction in the size of a product while the product’s price stays the same.

A Rapidly Increasing Money Supply ​

We can get a better view of the real causes of price inflation only if we look somewhere other than the private sector. More specifically, the acceleration in price inflation that we are now being forced to endure is the result of unprecedented increases in the money supply that have occurred since the government-forced covid lockdowns began in the spring of 2020. Faced with a forcibly “closed” economy, the federal government called upon the central bank, the Federal Reserve, to create vast new sums of dollars for distribution to the millions of Americans whose jobs and earnings were destroyed by government lockdowns. These were essentially bribes designed to pay Americans to sit at home and spent their newly-printed money. This created an immediate inflationary boom by mid-2020. It’s easy to see why. The money supply increased by 40 percent between February 2020 and February 2021, rising by $5.7 trillion.
The money supply has shrunk somewhat since early 2022, but on net, the money supply is up by $4.7 trillion since February 2020. That a 32 percent increase. With a current total money supply of approximately $19 trillion, this also means that 25 percent of all the dollars that have ever existed were created after 2020.
In other words, the covid-fueled monetary inflation set up today’s continuing price-inflation spree. The regime economists have repeatedly attempted to gaslight the public with claims of “falling inflation,” but consumers can see that groceries, housing fuel, and services are all significantly more expensive than they were just a few years ago.
Some economists might claim this is no big deal because there has also been price inflation in wages. Unfortunately for regular people, real wages fell throughout most of 2022 and 2023, and continue to show only very anemic growth.

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