What, they have to be accurate to within 3 sigmas? LOL As long as they are within 1 order of magnitude, that should suffice.
OK you mugs... I personally believe the Fed and Gummint are as financially EVIL as evil can get... greedy liars and thieves.... enemy of all but the richest Americans. If you think they are "your friends", then I think you don't yet know enough of world financial history. If I've given you food for thought, that's good. But I'm not arguing this point any more..... at least not here and not today.
I'm not saying they are good. I'm just saying that to have employees calculating that inflation is actually 8% and reporting it at 2.5% and expecting there not to be a leak of real information is implausible. But i do think that our G-ment is way too big and there needs to be a ton of fat trimmed off.
OK, one more. Of course someone would "let the cat out of the bag"... but they create the illusion of low inflation by how it's defined. They say we should be focusing on something like, "wage component of finished goods shipped in from China" as our inflation barometer. All along we're to ignore increases in food, energy, cars, houses, taxes, college tuition, insurance, medical services, yada, yada, yada. If they were BLATANT liars, someone would call them on it... so they're more subtle. In any event, they're trying to control our behavior by LIES about true overall inflation. After all, if we all accepted the inflation rate as 8%, we'd be demanding higher rates on bonds and loans. Gummint WANTS us to believe the "low inflation LIE". Last time I checked, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis showed an M2 money supply increasing at 12% annual rate for the last few years. If the world GDP is 4.5%, the inflation rate has to be somewhere in the 7.5% range... maybe higher. Inflation being MUCH higher than the Gummint is telling us is indisputable in my book.
1913 was when it all happened. Federal Reserve was created and the IRS. Coincidence. I think not. Taxpayers pay the interest on government bonds. There should be no taxes at all. Monaco, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates do not have any personal income taxes. I wish we didn't either. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_around_the_world
12.3% of America lives in poverty 15.8% without health insurance... http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070828/ap_on_go_ot/poverty
And fiat paper is fraught with rapacious temptation to make it more a danger than any standing army. Original intent was for Congress to judiciously and responsibly exact money supply for the greatest benefit of The People. Instead, they delivered us over to Foreign Bankers to secure their own parasitic existence in perpetuity. The Gold Standard isn't necessary. A precious metal / commodity-backed currency will do fine. Grains, metals, whatever. Anything tangible, of value thats plentiful - that can't be printed or conjured at no cost to the issuer. The market will determine the appropriate backing ratio and preference for one over the other. Its a wonder America even survived before the Fed! (sarcasm).