Record Inflation: Year-to-Year Prices Rise Most In 40 Years

P. Gardner Goldsmith | January 13, 2022
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It looks like the Biden Administration has achieved yet another milestone.

As Thomas Barrabi reports for the New York Post, and as many Americans suspected, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that for the year 2021, “inflation” hit a 40-year high.

The surge was the highest annual increase since June 1982 for the Consumer Price Index, a key inflation gauge that tracks the costs of goods and services including used car sales, groceries and rent, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. On a monthly basis, consumer prices rose 0.5 percent in December.

This is the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which is not even measured in the same way as the CPI was measured in 1982, and which likely underestimates the price increases caused by inflation of the money supply.

As I recently noted when discussing the mindset of failed Biden Comptroller nominee Saule Omarova, pop media reporters and government bureaucrats who use the term “inflation” usually err. They report on the RESULTS of inflation: price increases. The inflation of the money supply already has occurred.

In fact, these price increases are not all the fault of Joe Biden.

As I also have noted in a detailed piece for the Mises Institute in 2004, all government-tied, or government-run currencies see the government, or government-created bank, issue more and more currency to expand the power of the state. Sometimes, the government, or government-granted monopoly bank will pretend to have what are called “reserves” of precious metals, and they promise to issue their paper money at a fixed rate of exchange for the metal.

But, as I noted in my piece on Omarova, history going back to ancient Egypt has shown that money-hungry government does not hold that line, and they begin to engage in what is called “fractional reserve banking.”

Related: Biden's Marxist Comptroller Nominee Withdraws From Consideration | MRCTV

By this, they still publicly promise that their paper money is worth a certain amount of the metal, but they keep printing the paper and not acquiring the metal, thus reducing the ratio of metal to paper, and reducing the buying power of each unit of paper money.

It – like any other government-issued, or government-monopoly-bank-issued currency is a form of fraud, and this inflation of the money supply leads to upward bids in the prices of goods…

It also leads to ignorant reporters and slippery government agencies telling us that the “inflation rate” has gone up like crazy, when, in fact, the MONEY SUPPLY has been inflated like crazy, and the actual numbers they are reporting are the price increases of certain selected (about 10,000, food and gas are excluded from what the bureaucrats call the “Core CPI”) goods in their “index.”

And it leads to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki in October claiming that skyrocketing prices actually just indicate increased demand, and people need to see all this as “a good thing.”

It’s not a “good thing.” Not in the least.

As Barrabi observes in the NY Post, prices have risen more than 6 percent for the last three months, and:

Excluding food and gas, the index (CPI) rose 0.6 percent in December and 5.5 percent over the last 12 months. Food prices rose 0.5 percent for the month and 6.3 percent year-over-year.

He also notes:

Shelter costs rose 0.4 percent in December and 4.1 percent over 12 months. Used vehicle prices surged 3.5 percent for the month and are up more than 37 percent year over year.

And we should note that the Constitution does not allow the US to issue paper currency, only coinage, and it does not grant the US government the sole power of issuing currency, or give the US government the power to license one giant banking cartel as the sole issuers of “paper money notes.”

As I wrote in my 2004 piece on inflation and deflation for the Mises Institute, since the US government unconstitutionally and immorally created the Federal Reserve money-printing-debt-buying-credit-issuing-government-subsidizing-inflation-causing so-called Bank, the currency we are forced to use has decreased in buying power an average of over 2 percent per year, COMPOUNDED.

To bring it to more recent times, I noted this:

Put in other terms, in 1972, it took $5 to buy the same amount of goods that $1 could buy in 1850. Ten years later, in 1984, it took $12.44. Twenty years later, in 2004, it is estimated that it costs $22.44 to buy what one could have bought for only a dollar in 1850.

The problem has persisted, regardless of the Presidential Carousel or the changing tides of political power in Congress. It persists because the central government – always in need of cash that it can’t completely get through taxation – either prints its own money, or creates a “central bank” like the Fed to print it and buy government debt.

Cutting government spending would help reduce the pressure on this money-making sham, but the only way to really stop it is to completely sever any connection government has to currency.

In fact, the US Constitution – that dusty thing the politicians say they’ll respect – only allows the federal government to MINT COINS, and it does not give said government the power to create the EXCLUSIVE bank in the US. If politicians actually abided by the Constitution, private banks could issue their own forms of currency, as coins or as paper, backed by metal, and we could see if they had proper reserves. Those inflating by fractional reserve would see consumers turn away.

After all, who wants to get paid with a money that isn’t actually worth what it says, and which sees continually decreasing buying power?

That’s a rhetorical question, of course.

Right now, we’re stuck with their imposed system. And we’re struck by their never-ending blows of higher prices due to their inflation of the money supply.

That's not a good thing, Ms. Psaki.

 

Related: Media Crib Notes On Inflation From Jen Psaki - FAIL Economics | MRCTV

 

 

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