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I said I'd come back when I figured out a way to make money of this crowds ability to completely convince themselves that the official inflation numbers are wrong without being able to provide a single number to back up their point. So, I'd like to propose a bilateral forward contract. These are...

OK, United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index. Detailed category by category price tables can be found at http://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables.htm Which of those are you alleging are wrong, by how much, and what are your sources? Lets talk about food and energy...

This is very interesting, both from a big picture view and the legal maneuverings of this case. They essentially picked on a small entrepreneur who folded pretty much as soon as he realized he was going to run into CFTC opposition, so he isn't going to fight back on the key issue, which is the...

I know, crazy that anyone would believe the exhaustively documented inflation numbers that they can easily verify themselves, which also happen to match the numbers the the economists at GS, McKinsey, and a slew of other private sector companies. Must be a plant. I'm actually an entrepreneur...

Thank you for that well reasoned and insightful comment. You really educated us all.

Seriously, "Hedonics"? Let's get intuitive here. The price of energy is down 70% from 2008, the price of mineral commodities down 40%. Oh, and you might have heard of that housing bubble bust, somebody's renting one of my houses for far less than the market rent in 2007, thats called deflation...

Sorry for the fixed income diversion, you're right I know the common usage I just think it's entitled seniors misusing a term. I don't however, get why you think a senior is worse off today than say 10 years ago or 50 years ago if the real interest rates haven't changed appreciably?

So if it's too small to matter then why so adamant about hiking it? Highly recommend a macro and micro econ course. The concept of nominal vs real interest rates is fundamental. If you're on a "fixed income" (hate that term, we're almost all on a "fixed income" and lots would love to have a...

So you claim that the dozen or so independent public and private sources that calculated inflation between 1.5% and 2% every year using reams of quantatative data since 2012 are all in collusion and wrong in the same direction and amount? Again simply because you say so? Definitely winning...

It's always easier to win hearts and minds if you provide a modicum of explanation as to why your position is correct. Some quantitative backing of your arguments also helps. It turns out that "Because I said so" is actually a shockingly ineffective method of persuasion.

So to be clear, we should do something that risks pushing us into a recession even though everything if going fine ("Unemployment is low, the dollar is strong, GDP is growing fast."), so that we will have a tool to help us out of the recession we caused unnecessarily? BTW, its punishing savers...

I think its a sign of a dinosaur if you're a trader who refuses to add to their toolbox by learning how to code. That doesn't mean that you're going to write an HFT algo to do all your trading for you, but why would you willingly give up the advantage of being able to code strategies that you...

Because there's not moral imperative to raise rates, you raise them to prevent inflation. If unemployment is low and GDP is growing fast with no inflation at current rates, it makes no sense to raise rates. Cue the "hyper-inflation is just around the corner, I promise this time" and "all the...

Today as an experiment I decided to jump on a thread full of unsubstantiated assertions and attempt to counter that with quantitative rigor, point out obvious logical fallacies, or appeal to common sense counterexamples. It was fun, although as you can see clearly a “whack a mole” game. Post...

The western world seems pretty darn successful to me. The U.S. effectively left the gold standard in 1933, meaning it neither stopped the bubble in 1929 nor prevented the worst depression the country ever suffered. Pretty much the entire world is a counter point to the statement "The history of...

Source, and once you get that, relevance? The average life of an internet company in 1950 was...oh, there were no internet companies and the world's a much different place than it was in 1950, turns out. Don't really get what we're laughing out loud at really either.

The law of large numbers I'm familiar with is a theorem in statistics that basically says if you perform an experiment a large number of times, the average results will approach the expected value. Using that accepted definition your post makes even less sense than before. Do you have another...

I'm serious about the MOOC, especially for someone with your interest in the subject. I think you'll find it really worthwhile, even if you took the courses in undergrad. I did my MBA late and my life experience made those courses way more valuable for me even though I was essentially redoing...

One would think that if you were able to add trillions to an economy without increasing inflation that you should be pretty happy about it! You seem to have this idea that there is some moral imperative that more money is bad, that somehow you have to "earn it", no pain no gain. In truth the...

It's going to cause rampant inflation, any minute now...well maybe just any minute now..really, it's just around the corner...actually we're in the middle of it you just can't tell because of a vast conspiracy.... Just ask the folks who've been apoplectic about that since 2008, they can tell...