[Velvet]

Originally Posted by Rainger99

The question was whether any of the various CPIs use insurance increases to determine the rate of inflation. In the past few years, insurance has increased much faster than most other items.

Car insurance went up 26% from 2023 to 2024. If the CPI doesn’t use insurance as one factor to determine inflation, the figures are not accurate.

Ah, thank you for clarifying.

[MrChip72]

Originally Posted by opinionist

"There are many, many economic reasons why deflation is avoided at all costs."

All those reasons are a cheap excuse for the government to print money to pay the bills.
The government is printing money at a rate of 1 trillion dollars every 100 days.

The Federal Reserve ordered between $180.5 billion to $204.4 billion to be printed for calendar year 2024. This is the 3rd lowest volume in the past 10 years. I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers from.

Source: Federal Reserve Board - Currency Print Orders

[Glowing Horizon]

Originally Posted by Stu from NYC

As John Maynard Keynes (father of Keynesian economics) said prices are sticky downward.

Economists have even more flowery euphemisms than funeral directors do. “Sticky” 😉

[Rainger99]

Originally Posted by MrChip72

The Federal Reserve ordered between $180.5 billion to $204.4 billion to be printed for calendar year 2024. This is the 3rd lowest volume in the past 10 years. I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers from.

Source: Federal Reserve Board - Currency Print Orders

I think he was referring to the national debt.

At current rates, the U.S. national debt is growing by a remarkable $1 trillion about every 100 days, equal to roughly $3.6 trillion per year.

Just a moment...

[jimbomaybe]

Originally Posted by MrChip72

The Federal Reserve ordered between $180.5 billion to $204.4 billion to be printed for calendar year 2024. This is the 3rd lowest volume in the past 10 years. I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers from.

Source: Federal Reserve Board - Currency Print Orders

The number of physical dollars in circulation is not relevant. The US spent over 4.5 trillion dollars on covid relief, no goods or services were created for this money made available, supply and demand= inflation, the size of a dollar bill did not change ,its value did

[Rainger99]

Originally Posted by jimbomaybe

The number of physical dollars in circulation is not relevant. The US spent over 4.5 trillion dollars on covid relief, no goods or services were created for this money made available, supply and demand= inflation, the size of a dollar bill did not change ,its value did

This is a chart showing the increase in M1. I don’t understand its significance but that huge jump as a result of Covid looks bad. Perhaps some people can elaborate.

[Bill14564]

Originally Posted by Rainger99

This is a chart showing the increase in M1. I don’t understand its significance but that huge jump as a result of Covid looks bad. Perhaps some people can elaborate.

It looks like the jump was a result of including savings account balances in the number and was not only due to COVID relief. The M2 graph might be better for seeing the impact of COVID relief funds.

From a Federal Reserve Q&A page:

1. What changes to the H.6 statistical release were announced on December 17, 2020?
Posted: 01/28/2021

A. A number of changes to Statistical Release H.6, “Money Stock Measures,” were announced on December 17, 2020. The changes, listed here, account for recent amendments to Regulation D and efforts to streamline and modernize the release.

Recognize savings deposits as a transaction account by combining the H.6 statistical release items “Savings deposits” and “Other checkable deposits” and report the resulting sum, “Other liquid deposits,” as part of the M1 monetary aggregate.
Publish the H.6 statistical release at a monthly rather than weekly frequency and retain only monthly average data on the release itself. Weekly average, nonseasonally adjusted data will continue to be made available in the Board’s Data Download Program (DDP), while weekly average, seasonally adjusted data will no longer be provided.
Provide components of the monetary aggregates at a total industry level as opposed to presenting the breakdown of components by commercial banks and thrift institutions.
Report only data used to construct the monetary aggregates, thereby eliminating the release of data on institutional money funds and memorandum items on U.S. government deposits and deposits due to foreign banks and foreign official institutions.
Make the release available in only one format—HTML.

A template of the H.6 statistical release reflective of the above changes can be found here.
2. When will the Federal Reserve implement the H.6 statistical release changes announced on December 17, 2020?
Posted: 12/17/2020

A. The Federal Reserve will implement the H.6 statistical release changes announced on December 17, 2020, with the first monthly H.6 statistical release to be published on Tuesday, February 23, 2021, inclusive of retroactive updates to the data back to May 2020.

[Rainger99]

Originally Posted by Bill14564

The M2 graph might be better for seeing the impact of COVID relief funds.

Here is the M2 graph.

[Bill14564]

Originally Posted by Rainger99

Here is the M2 graph.

Which shows a $2.5T increase in early 2020 and a $6T increase over two years unlike the M1 graph which shows a $12T increase in early 2020 alone.

[GoRedSox!]

The irony of all this is that due to politics, so many point the finger only at one President. It's like they have forgotten, or want to forget, that the first two stimulus checks and all those PPP loans and extended unemployment benefits came from the previous President.

For my part, I am not blaming either one. We were in the middle of a world-wide pandemic that was killing millions of people. We were suddenly thrust into that, we didn't have all the answers, it was the first pandemic in 100 years, it was uncharted territory. Yes, we still have some inflation, which is coming down. I think we have fared remarkably well based on fighting a pandemic that killed 1 million Americans.
The CPI numbers released today show more progress, and new highs again on Wall Street. FYI-insurance rates are factored into the CPI, in fact in the month of May, they fell by 0.5% according to the numbers.

[golfing eagles]

Originally Posted by GoRedSox!

The irony of all this is that due to politics, so many point the finger only at one President. It's like they have forgotten, or want to forget, that the first two stimulus checks and all those PPP loans and extended unemployment benefits came from the previous President.

For my part, I am not blaming either one. We were in the middle of a world-wide pandemic that was killing millions of people. We were suddenly thrust into that, we didn't have all the answers, it was the first pandemic in 100 years, it was uncharted territory. Yes, we still have some inflation, which is coming down. I think we have fared remarkably well based on fighting a pandemic that killed 1 million Americans.
The CPI numbers released today show more progress, and new highs again on Wall Street. FYI-insurance rates are factored into the CPI, in fact in the month of May, they fell by 0.5% according to the numbers.

Yes, but that would be 1 million Americans died WITH a positive COVID test, not necessarily FROM COVID.

PS: GO YANKEES!!!!

[Bill14564]

Originally Posted by golfing eagles

Yes, but that would be 1 million Americans died WITH a positive COVID test, not necessarily FROM COVID.

PS: GO YANKEES!!!!

Aren't you stealing someone else's line there?

[CoachKandSportsguy]

Originally Posted by Rainger99

The question was whether any of the various CPIs use insurance increases to determine the rate of inflation. In the past few years, insurance has increased much faster than most other items.

Car insurance went up 26% from 2023 to 2024. If the CPI doesn’t use insurance as one factor to determine inflation, the figures are not accurate.

Yes it does, however, it's an imputed number for the calculation, which makes the imputed number calculation suspect. Imputed number means that it's not a survey number like those for the costs of goods.. . Insurance is a service, and is calculated with the service CPI versus the goods CPI.

The goods CPI is much easier to get data and calculate. Service inflation is much harder, and given the slow method changes by the federal data collectors, they have resorted in history to an imputed number based upon financial results of insurance carriers. Therefore it's a blend of health, auto and life at the aggregate level.

They also changed some methodology at the beginning of the year for parts of the insurance component, and they just effed it up even more. . same with the cost of rental imputed from the cost of house sales. That being said, it's a blend for a national average, which means that FL is offset by much lower increases in other states. So FL is higher than the rest of the country for its third world characteristics. .

I hope this answer the question more than just yes/no

[golfing eagles]

Originally Posted by Bill14564

Aren't you stealing someone else's line there?

Public domain

[GoRedSox!]

Originally Posted by golfing eagles

Yes, but that would be 1 million Americans died WITH a positive COVID test, not necessarily FROM COVID.

PS: GO YANKEES!!!!

That is true, but anyone who believes that honest statistics are real can see the huge number of "excess" deaths that did occur in this country above the trend line.

There were a lot of "excess" retirements, too.

Not everyone impacted by COVID died. The folks struggling with Long Covid are also a very real group and larger than some might think.

My point really is that we can look in hindsight and see some of the mistakes but at the time decisions were being made, there was no playbook and everyone was doing the best they could.

The Red Sox are sadly not competitive and have been decimated by injuries as well. I'm not sure they would have been competitive if they didn't get crushed by injuries. We will see if the Yankees can turn it around in the post season this year. Soto makes that club much better.