Former Harvard President Larry Summers and recent top economic advisor to President Obama, who blew up a large portion of the Harvard's endowment playing with derivatives (
despite warnings from Iris Mack), sees even less current price inflation than Paul Krugman.
In today's FT, he
writes:
The underlying rate of inflation is still trending downwards...
Inflation trending downwards? I don't think Krugman is even writing that anymore.
Paging Iris Mack.
I often wonder how hacks like Summers can make a living at econ while I am busy busting my arse. But, then I remember who pays him.
ReplyDeleteOf course it's trending downwards. If we disregard all items which people need to live because of their inherent volatility, hold certain goods constant for statistical purposes, remove conflicting data points for accuracy, and evaluate the remaining evidence, it's clear that inflation is trending downwards.
ReplyDeleteLarry Summers' credibility is trending downards.
ReplyDeleteYou have to think like a Washington insider. Given the doubling of the monetary base, without interest on excess reserves, inflation would be through the roof. That's what it should be. Since inflation is less than that, it is trending downward.
ReplyDeleteI was speaking with my father recently about how the "experts" point to indices that have all of the important information removed in an attempt to show that things are going well. He responded with a story about a corporate meeting he sat through prior to retiring, where the management's line of discussion went very similar to that pointed out in the 1:00 Anon's comment: "If we ignore all of the areas where we're doing poorly, average out the areas where we're breaking even, introduce this multiplier to the areas where we're doing well, then throw all that into a graph, you can clearly see how well we're doing."
ReplyDelete