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发帖数: 26222 | 1 【 以下文字转载自 Military 讨论区 】
发信人: smokinggun (硝烟), 信区: Military
标 题: 美国统计局编造通货膨胀数据
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Sat Jun 18 00:12:26 2011, 美东)
Williams points out that one of Greenspan's manipulations of the CPI
involved the consideration that when steak got too expensive, the consumer
would substitute hamburger for the steak. So, Greenspan argued, the
inflation measure should reflect the costs of buying hamburger, not steak.
NEWS ANALYSIS
What's America's real inflation rate?
If rate is so low, how come food and energy cost so much?
Posted: March 19, 2008
9:44 pm Eastern
By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2011 WND
Why is it that the federal government says the U.S. has virtually no
inflation – less that 2 percent – but everything keeps getting more
expensive, especially food and gasoline?
Today, gasoline is well above $3.00 a gallon. "Sticker shock" comes not just
from the cost of buying a new car, but from the $50.00 or more it costs to
fill up the gas tank, even if you don't own an SUV.
You're lucky if $100 buys two bags of groceries at the supermarket, even if
you avoid the filet mignon.
Take a family of four to a movie theater to see a first-run film and it can
cost $75 even in the Midwest. You will shell out somewhere between $6 and $9
just for one adult ticket, and you can end up spending somewhere between $
65 to $75 total if all you do is spring for the luxury of popcorn and sodas.
Still, the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in
August 2007 a remarkably low inflation rate of only 1.7 percent.
(Story continues below)
Solving this riddle – that is, why everything costs so much when the
government tells us inflation rates are low – is simple:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics lies.
Inflation numbers are intentionally manipulated to keep cost-of-living
numbers low.
If the average chief executive officer cooked balance sheet numbers the way
the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates the Consumer Price Index, the
CEO would be in jail, even without Sarbanes-Oxley reporting standards.
Why does the federal government lie about inflation?
Again, the direct answer is simple.
Telling the truth about inflation would require the Federal Reserve to raise
interest rates and that would be bad for economic growth.
Besides, hundreds of billions of dollars in government entitlement payment
outflows depend on the inflation number.
For instance, federal law mandates that Social Security checks increase
thanks to "cost-of-living adjustments," or COLAs, that are supposed to
compensate for inflation.
So, higher inflation numbers cost the federal government millions more in
increased Social Security payments.
But when the Bureau of Labor Statistics intentionally rigs the Consumer
Price Index calculations to low-ball the inflation rate, Social Security
entitlement payments are kept level.
As a result, retirees quietly lose billions of dollars that should have been
paid out, had the cost of living numbers been reported honestly. But the
government saves the expense.
How does the federal government manipulate inflation numbers?
The Consumer Price Index, or CPI, is the central statistic the federal
government uses to calculate inflation.
The CPI is a complex government statistic that was introduced in the 1920s
to track the market cost of a "basket of goods and services."
Beginning during the Carter administration, federal economists cleverly
redefined the CPI, with the goal of removing from the index expensive items,
including food and energy, that would push the CPI higher.
Today, the Federal Reserve when setting interest rates focuses on a
variation of the CPI that measures "core inflation."
According to the Forbes "Investopedia," core inflation excludes items such
as food and energy because food and energy "face volatile price movements."
In other words, since food and energy prices can spike upwards, as they have
this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates "core inflation"
without food and energy prices, under the rationale that food and energy
price spikes are merely temporary price shocks that would distort the
measurement of underlying long-term inflation.
To a family faced with paying rising food costs to feed the kids and
skyrocketing gas costs just get to work, the definition of "core inflation"
at 2 percent is a joke, not at all reflective of the increased dollars the
family has to shovel out just to get by.
Even more disturbing, the Bureau of Labor Statistics' calculation of "core
inflation" is not limited merely to throwing food and energy prices out of
the CPI.
The price of any good or service in the CPI market basket prone to spiking
can be thrown out, under the rationale that the items with the largest price
changes reflect passing market disequilibrium that would distort the
measurement of long-term trends.
When removing expensive items from the CPI market basket of goods and
services was not enough to depress inflation numbers, the Bureau of Labor
Statistics innovated even more, changing the "weighted factors" used in
calculating CPI statistics, so the results end up under-reporting the true
inflation people experience in everyday living.
Econometrician John Williams maintains a website and publishes a newsletter
devoted to tracking federal government manipulations of economic statistics.
Williams estimates that current Social Security payments are roughly half of
what they should be if the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the
Consumer Price Index honestly.
Many of the CPI manipulations were masterminded by Alan Greenspan, chairman
of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve from 1987 under President
Reagan to 2006 under President George W. Bush.
Williams points out that one of Greenspan's manipulations of the CPI
involved the consideration that when steak got too expensive, the consumer
would substitute hamburger for the steak. So, Greenspan argued, the
inflation measure should reflect the costs of buying hamburger, not steak.
"Of course, replacing hamburger for steak in the calculations would reduce
the inflation rate," Williams commented, "but it represented the rate of
inflation in terms of maintaining a declining standard of living. Cost of
living was being replaced by the cost of survival."
"The old system told you how much you had to increase your income in order
to keep buying steak," Williams noted. "The new system promised you
hamburger, and then dog food, perhaps, after that."
Williams properly concluded that Greenspan's arguments violated the "intent
and common usage of the inflation index."
"The CPI was considered sacrosanct within the Department of Labor, given the
number of contractual relationships that were anchored to it," Williams
wrote. "The CPI was one number that never was to be revised, given its
widespread usage."
Williams calculates that the manipulations of the CPI index cause inflation
to be under-reported by as much as 7 percent.
The results of this under-reporting are dramatic, with the compounding
effect just since the early 1990s reducing annual cost-of-living adjustments
in Social Security by more than a third.
Greenspan's recently released autobiographical book, "The Age of Turbulence,
" openly admits how political the calculation of inflation is.
He notes that Richard Nixon imposed wage-and-price controls in 1971, even
though the rate of inflation then was less than 5 percent.
Greenspan argues that the 4.5 percent inflation we experienced for the half
century since we abandoned the gold standard may become the norm for the
future, with the unfortunate consequence that such a high rate means we will
see our saved dollars lose half their purchasing power "in fifteen years or
so."
At the height of the gold standard, between 1870 and 1913, just prior to
World War I, the cost of living as calculated by the Federal Reserve Bank of
New York rose only 0.2 percent annually, Greenspan notes.
The dilemma the Fed faces under our fiat currency system is that to keep
inflation truly low, the Fed has to keep interest rates high.
"Yet to keep the inflation rate down to a gold standard level of under 1
percent, or even a less draconian 1 to 2 percent range," Greenspan wrote, "
the Fed, given my scenario, would have to constrain monetary expansion so
drastically that it could temporarily drive up interest rates into the
double-digit range not seen since the days of Paul Volcker."
High interest rates constrict the money supply, make borrowing difficult,
and generally depress economic growth.
Greenspan's own solution was to keep interest rates artificially low, as low
as the 1 percent interest rates Greenspan in 2003 aspired to hold that low
for years – while simultaneously rigging the CPI numbers.
The Greenspan years can be characterized as a strategy of lying about
inflation to avoid the adverse political consequences of being honest and
facing the true cost-of-living music.
By lying about inflation, Greenspan justified 1 percent interest rates,
which in 2003 were the lowest rates in 45 years, in a determined plan to
keep the economy growing while he was at the helm.
But one result of the Greenspan liquidity party was to fuel real inflation.
So, when you wonder why food and gasoline cost so much when the government
says inflation is low, just remember: You are being lied to – something we
suspect you figured out long ago, just by going to the supermarket and the
gas station.
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