Inflation Statistics Manipulation: The Goldsmiths Part XXIX
Economics / Market Manipulation Feb 12, 2009 - 12:38 AM GMTBy: Robert_Bradshaw
Being an old man, and often living on a small social security check, it was logical that I would take an interest in the US government manipulation of the so-called inflation rate (from the CPI) since it affects the Cost of Living (COLA) payments due social security recipients and most other retirees.
Particularly under the Bill “Slick” Clinton presidency, and then the Bush presidency, I noticed that the so-called official inflation rate of around 2-3% per year did not make sense whenever I had to buy things. Probably the most ridiculous items were intangibles—like car insurance. From 1995 to date, I have seen my car insurance go up from $50 a year to over $600 per year. I have a computer and printer. Paper and ink costs have went into the sky. Just a few years ago, I bought paper at $1 per realm. Now it is $5-7 per realm. Yet the government tells us there is no inflation.
Consequently, in the 1990s, I came to believe that the government was lying to us. As I watched my annual COLA increases of only a few dollars (when they should have been five to ten times higher in view of a real inflation rate of 10 to 20% per annum), I concluded long ago that one of the reasons why the government was deliberately keeping the so-called official inflation rate down was so that she did not have to be faced with huge COLA increases in social security and the other retirement plans (this allows more government monies to be spent on wars and other programs).
There is an outfit called the American Association of Retired People (AARP). I am not a member and I have no intention of becoming a member because I believe that they do not serve retired people (as I will prove here in this article). But I am constantly hounded by direct mail letters and email messages from them trying to get me to become a member and pay them money each year.
So, about ten years ago, I wrote the AARP a letter which offered some proofs that the government was lying about the inflation rate to keep COLA payments down. Surely, this was something that AARP would be pleased to be given a heads-up on. The so-called Director of Research with the AARP wrote me back and patronized me with a lot of nonsense that showed to me the apparent incompetence of the AARP.
If the AARP is supposed to represent retired people, one would suppose that that organization would be vitally interested when retired people are being cheated with fraudulent data produced by the government in order to defraud them out of legitimate COLA increases as stipulated by law. Well, what a surprise, the AAPP either didn't get it or was deliberately on the side of the government and its secret plutocratic market manipulators.
In any case, the AARP did write me to give me a song and dance about the so-called professional people compiling the inflation statistics in the Federal government and that we all should trust them. Now, if you believe this stupidity, then your IQ level must be at the single digit. Or as some of us would say, you probably still believe in the tooth fairy or you might be in the market to buy a bridge. Well, since I am not a member of the AARP and won't become a member, I guess I had no basis to write them or complain about their failure to watch after the interests of retired people.
As for as the patronizing nonsense they heaped on me, I would just note that I have had studies in statistics at the graduate level of a major, respected university. Too, I have had a huge interest in the subject and have addressed it often in the context of the US inflation rate. I know that it is possible to prove almost anything with statistics. While there is much I don't know about the inflation rate/CPI, there are some things which I have come to understand over the last dozen years or so.
The purpose of this article is to share a few ideas on the dishonesty that the US Bureau of Labor Statistics people follow in their continuous rip-offs of the American people with their ridiculously fraudulent and deceiving inflation statistics.
What They Ignore
One of the favorite tricks of the fraud meisters is that they try to ignore inflationary increases whenever they can in their work. For example, if they can claim that a price increase is due to seasonal effects, they do so. On this, take gasoline and the fact that US gasoline consumption goes up in the summer months while more Americans are on the road. True, gasoline prices spike up from around Memorial Day to Labor Day as the large oil companies take advantage of the situation and boost prices.
But according to the Labor people, these increases are not due to inflation. So they generally ignore them or discount them as much as possible on the premise that they are merely seasonal adjustments. And since they operate on the premise of price changes over time, this process works out marvelously for them in order to keep inflation rates down.
The next type of price increases which they routinely bypass and ignore are those increases actually hid by a decrease in the quality of goods sold on the marketplace. Tragically, there aren't many persons around who watch the quality of merchandise and detect the reality that American goods are decreasing in quality over time.
I remember the steel that used to be in old Ford model A cars. After the war, thin sheets of steel and aluminum came to be used. With this inferior stuff, a car in an accident was literally torn up. You could lean on this thin stuff and it would fold or buckle from your weight. This was not the way things once were in automobiles.
The last twenty years has seen a turn from glass bottles and containers to plastics. Every year, numerous goods that used to be sold in glass bottles are now sold in cheap plastic containers. It is my understanding that the inflation computations have ignored this change in reality in the last 20 years. Swell, they say that plastic is as good as glass. But is it? Tragically for many of us, we are just now beginning to find out that plastic containers offer health risks. Canada has finally awakened to the dangers of plastic baby bottles.
In another matter, the US food supply otherwise offers real questions about its propriety for many other very basis reasons—mainly the increasing turn to genetically modified food and the use of more and more chemical poisons in production, handling and shipping of food.
Many large food store chains are now insisting that their produce department workers wear protective gloves and face masks when working with the poisoned US food supplies. This little reality should be sufficient alone to communicate something to people with brains above the idiot level. Yes, if it kills bugs, mice and rats, it will kill you and me. Believe me this stuff kills everything—maybe not immediately but over time as the toxins accumulate.
Take a look at your friendly dairy section in your food market. In the last few years, drugged up cattle are now producing most of the dairy products that we buy. Do you actually believe that store bought milk, cheese and yogurt of twenty years ago is the same as store bought milk, cheese and yogurt today?
Most modern Americans don't have the foggiest idea on what food is supposed to taste like or how it should be beneficial for health. Take eggs; for 50 years the quality of eggs has went down the tubes. Eggs from properly fed chickens on the ground are a world apart from the sick, pathetic eggs from the egg factories. Today's eggs have a pale yellow instead of a bright orange as should be the case. Believe me, there is a difference in taste that will just blow your appetite.
So what has happened is that some few stores have so-called organic foods which supposedly are not genetically modified, are not pumped full of poisons, and are not from cows and hens laced with female hormones and other drugs. Consumers now pay a big premium to buy safe food. Yes, to avoid the detrimental effects of salmonella, e-coli bacteria and mad cow disease, it is a good idea to watch what we eat.
When the Bureau of Labor Statistics frauds go into the market to check prices, they should address the qualitative factors. But they don't. Their view is that grape juice in a glass bottle is the same as grape juice in a plastic container. But I submit that they are not the same.
More on the Qualitative
While the US inflation checkers are quick to ignore decreases in the qualitative factors of items when it's to their advantage in keeping the inflation rate down, they alternatively like to jump on the qualitative factor when it's to their advantage.
Thus, when an automobile price goes up, they like to say that the reason for the price increase is because it is a qualitative increase. In other words, the price increase is not due to inflation; but rather to qualitative improvements. Apparently, their reasoning is that over time things improve in quality.
How totally absurd this is. The reality of pathetic inflation is causing producers to abandon and desert quality in order to compete competitively in the market place. That's the whole story of genetically modified food and the use of chemical pesticides, additives and other poisons. Producers are grabbing anything and everything if it means a chance to produce an item cheaper. Tragically, most of them could care less what it does to the gullible public that buys their products.
Years ago, I heard a good story of the modern madness in man about a vegetable grower in Southern California. He was using excessive pesticides on his vegetables. A colleague raised a question about it and the resulting health for people eating the poisonous food. The grower replied that it was no problem because the vegetables were being shipped for sale in New York.
Now, the reader may ask what the inflation rate has to do with gold and precious metals? Well, it is the inflation problem which adds value to gold and precious metals as places to save money. If our government had not consistently lied to us about the real inflation rate, gold and other precious metals would be substantially higher today. And some day, the government lies will catch up with the manipulators. And when it does, at least gold and silver will go into the sky.
There is an excellent web site that addresses the crooked operations of the US government in its manipulation of the inflation rate. It is www.shadowstats.com as hosted by John Williams. Mr. Williams' work is outstanding and deserves our support. It conclusively proves the fraudulent and dishonest practices of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. I have not read Mr. Williams' comments on the above. My presentation is my own opinion and belief based on my years of watching the dishonesty of the government and its voodoo statistics.
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Back issues of the Goldsmiths, by the editor of the Analysis of News, can be accessed from a Google or Yahoo search engine by typing in “R. D. Bradshaw” Goldsmiths. Several hundred web sites can be found with the back issues and with translations to Spanish, Italian, German, Chinese and other foreign languages. Goldseek.com has the first 28 parts in its archives. Finally, the “Archives-Goldsmiths” of this website (www.Analysis-news.com ) has all of the Goldsmith articles issued to date.
Besides the revelations contained in the Goldsmiths' articles, the work of the plutocratic financial market manipulators to conspiratorially manipulate and control the financial markets (to make more profits and install a world government under their management) is also addressed at length in the periodic analysis of the news and in other articles produced at www.analysis-news.com. This website has an article of interest to any person interested in understanding the market manipulators. It is the Hidden Secret of the Manipulators, why they succeed and how to follow their manipulations.
eaders of the above articles are invited to visit www.analysis-news.com and become a subscriber to regularly read some of the material from the world of information which will further reveal how extensive the manipulation, control and dishonesty realities are in the financial, currency and commodity markets, not only in the US but indeed around the world. To go to this website, please click at the link here: www.analysis-news.com
By Robert Bradshaw
Robert Bradshaw is a retired CPA and editor of Analysis of News at www.Analysis-News.com.
© 2009 Copyright Robert Bradshaw - All Rights Reserved
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