First, you make the claim that a consumer switching to hamburger from steak is something that should not affect the overall inflation score, because even if *steak* increases in value, not everything has. The problem with this argument is that a rise in the price of steak does in fact mean that a small amount of inflation has occurred. The *systemic* inflation rate edges up slightly when the *steak* inflation rate goes up sharply. That’s the point. Inflation is a measure of the depreciation of the buying power of a dollar. We measure that with how much it buys. Meat is a basic product of our economy, and its price increase does indicate something about the value of a dollar.

Second, you say that part of the issue is a question of outmoded products that should not be as heavily weighted. Fair enough that we should not weight buggy whips and butter churns as heavily; however, I believe the problem is more that *burger* is not a more technologically advanced form of *steak*. The “basket” should change from time to time to reflect overall changes in preference, but only at par – that is, when the auto became more important than the buggy, we should’ve come up with a retro-active par calculation for buggies and cars. Making such adjustments back and forth as prices change is not appropriate for something as basic as meat. Does meat go out of style? And also…is burger really a different kind of steak? Does it really replace steak? I think the answer to these questions is no.

I have a qualm with another one of your claims – you say that you can’t trust shadow stats’ arguments because they don’t cite sources. The problem with this argument is that shadow stats is an original source, selling their data as a trade secret! The only other source you need *is* the CPI; in fact, they’re only using the CPI before some recent politicians started messing with it. Fine if you think that there are flaws in the old one; the difference is that what he’s really hiding from you is the data set; you could pay to get it. The calculation is do-able for anyone willing to spend the time. Furthermore, he gives you his whole reasoning freely; you are able to disagree just fine on any point. Couple that with the fact that the federal social security payouts are tied by law to the CPI, and you have plenty of reason for the CPI to simply be biased by *optimism* and budgetary *desperation* without the need for *conspiracy*. And plenty of a market for someone to sell more realistic data.

Otherwise, good rebuttal to some of the common tin-foil-hat myths.

You aren’t missing everything, the argument is extremely clear and straightforward. I’m not sure how it could be stated any simpler.

A quick (albeit crude) assemblage of the history is here:
http://www.wtv-zone.com/Mary/BIGGESTSCAMINHISTORY.HTML

Can you refute any of those claims or have some other books, videos or online references I can further research.
I am not pushing what I believe, but am seeking out knowledge and understanding of a murky history of the United States that has become the USA.
TIA

Furthermore, substantially all of the FED’s profits every year are given to the U.S. Treasury. If the FED were privately-owned, the owners would be very unhappy about having their profits always given away.

If ‘minor’ little details like this get overlooked, I can only imagine the efforts taken on such an endeavor to ‘debunk conspiracy theories’.

The CPI has been changed so many times in the last 10 years that any year-over-year measurment is hard to track. Hedonics, Geometric weighting, full-subsitutions, etc. If we use pre-1990 calculations the CPI is a lot higher. Even the ILO has stated that our CPI is not really a COLI – however the only deception by the government is not really explaining that difference. I don’t have a problem with teh CPI or the COLI. I have a problem that the government has continued to make changes so that what we are measuring is different but in name it remains the same.
It is clear that keeping the CPI low is important because it also affects Social Security benefits and Treasuries. That alone is a clear reason as to why to keep the CPI low. It is also interesting in that all the changes made to the CPI in the last couple of decades has LOWERED it – rather than kept it the same or increase it.
As per M3 – the FED’s excuse to not measure it as per a cost cutting measure is rather silly. It is still being measured – they just rather refer to M2 (which is also costly to measure) and not refer to M3. I think both Bogel, Paul, Buffet, Walker, and others all make compelling arguments as to why we should continue to measure it.

One thing is for sure – seeing 100s of billions lent at the discount window, opening it up to non-members, and now extending the it from 30 to 84 days is not a sign that things are running smoothly.

Looking at non COLI inflation measurements – it’s apparent that the CPI is not very good at measuring inflation.

From credit lines it would seem that money is very tight – (if I didn’t know better I would think that target rates were at 8-10% and discount 12% – also they must of stopped printing money). However we know that is far from the truth. Money is being poured into the system as we are seeing the largest unwind of leverage in the history of the world.

Now the GSEs only answer is a bailout. Are we to believe that $5 trillion in assets, which $1.5 trillion is non-performing is going to be bailed out by the Fed without the need of printing more money (hence inflation). Only a fool (like Frank) could by such a falsehood.

These are interesting times – and the disparity between government data reporting and what is actually happening on the street (wall street and main street) is laughable if we were not in this mess ourselves.

I am not a conspiracist – but math is math. And 2+2 does not equal 5, no matter how much Bernanke wants to convince us that it is so.

Let me use an example of price increases: The Honda Civic. In 1980, you could buy a stripped-down Honda Civic for under $4,000. Now, if you believe the government’s 3% inflation lies of the last 27 years, the price would have doubled to $8,000+ (Rule of 72 divided by 3%=24). Instead, the true inflation rate since 1980 has been 6% and the Civic’s price has doubled twice to $16,000+.