If you have bought fuel or groceries lately, you probably have noticed that the Biden Administration propaganda about reducing inflation is nothing more than a shell game trying to get you to believe that inflation is not as bad as your wallet says it is. The Biden Administration, and the lapdog news media for that matter, focuses on the core inflation rates that remove energy and food prices from the calculation. It’s a major fudge factor justified by government economists because they say food and fuel prices are too volatile to be included. The “renaming” of the Consumer Price Indexes occurred in 1978, when the Lord of Inflation, Jimmy Carter, blew up the economy like Biden is doing today.
Energy and food costs are calculated in the Consumer Price Index-Urban, or CPI-U, not the “Core CPI’ that removes energy and food and is used by inflation-generating Administrations and the news media to make it seem like socialist economic policies are not as bad as they seem. On April 13, White House National Economic Council Deputy Director Bharat Ramamurti told CNBC that the March CPI report is “a very, very positive report, as you highlighted just now, inflation at the headline level continues to come down, nine straight months now of declining inflation. One of the most salient prices for families, for consumers–grocery prices–actually went down over the last month.” I guess Ramamurti doesn’t do his own grocery shopping because the rest of us haven’t seen this relief.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported Wednesday that the CPI-U “rose 0.1 percent in March on a seasonally adjusted basis, after increasing 0.4 percent in February. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 5.0 percent before seasonal adjustment. The index for shelter was by far the largest contributor to the monthly all items increase. This more than offset a decline in the energy index, which decreased 3.5 percent over the month as all major energy component indexes declined. The food index was unchanged in March with the food at home index falling 0.3 percent. The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.4 percent in March, after rising 0.5 percent in February. Indexes which increased in March include shelter, motor vehicle insurance, airline fares, household furnishings and operations, and new vehicles.”
BLS said, “The all items index increased 5.0 percent for the 12 months ending March; this was the smallest 12-month increase since the period ending May 2021. The all items less food and energy index rose 5.6 percent over the last 12 months. The energy index decreased 6.4 percent for the 12 months ending March, and the food index increased 8.5 percent over the last year.” So don’t get the impression that inflation is going down, it’s only the rate of the increase that is slowing. Figures lie and liars figure. It’s like Jeremiah 8:11, “For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.”They are trying to make it hurt less in our minds saying things are headed in the right direction, when they are close to running off a cliff. Believing them is, say it with me…Stupidocrisy.
