Unemploymenmt RATE 4.6 % unchanged. NO RATE CUT. But expect a change in wording. USA citizens have no idea what a much weaker dollar will do to you. The Fed must defend the dollar. So he will cut rates when demand really falls off. So stop spending USA, and that is why the fed must wait a till USA is in a confirmed recession. They dont want to prevent it, just to try and stop it getting too bad,(ie depression). So when demand falls off, they lower interest rates, the dollar falls but as the demand is not there, inflation from a weaker dollar does not occur so much. There might even be a rally in the dollar on fears of world recession. Who knows !
i know those numbers, but just for example: do you believe this? double digit earnings, unemplyment rate < 5% and 7 YEARS of negative GDP growth?
Why not. I mean the bubble pops, people are leveraged up to the hilt. Jobs gotta go down and the bears rule the roost. Its been a great few weeks.
All of this talk misses the point of the *real* current driver of inflation: bad oil/energy policy. Because of these corn planting ethanol subsidies, not enough wheat/soy/etc is getting planted, despite recent record low stocks. Same goes for energy policy that should be on the books that forces oil demand down (ie requiring avg fleet to be above 35mpg). I'd honestly be a lot more worried about wheat above $8 than what the fed does with a quarter or half percent rate move. I doubt anyone would be complaining about inflation if gasoline (we used less of) was $1.50/gal and bread was $1.00/loaf. Instead, we have nearly $3.00 gasoline and $4.00 bread. (sorry guys, I don't eat that ration-quality wonderbread crap). All we're left with is cheap semiconductors !!! (who ever thought i'd be able to buy 4GB of SODIMM laptop memory for $150) You can get a pretty solid computer for $700 nowadays.
"it cost us roughly the same every time we have deiced to upgrade;" again, you are missing the point the price of computers DEFLATES you are saying it COSTS the same to UPGRADE duh that means prices are (obviously) deflating, since you are getting more computer for the same money again, i remember when 64k ram costs several hundred dollars part of the way that (but hardly the only way) capitalism is so effective at building wealth is because of innovations like those that make technology cheaper over time
no you are missing the point. it is not about computers that you upgrade once in 2-3 years. it is all about items that you buy on daily basis and form majority of your life spendings. And these items are going up up up. that said when calculating CPI these differences should be reflected in weights applied to individual categories. I don't know the exact methodology.
Relative importance of components in the Consumer Price Indexes: ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiri2006.txt Food 15% Housing 42% Apparel 4% Transportation 17% Medical care 6% Recreation 5.5% Education and communication 6%