The publishing of critism

Reader comment on: Shlaes on Inflation

Submitted by David Lund (United States), Jul 18, 2014 18:51

A person publishing a critique should be more careful. First, he made a tremendous math mistakes. The increase is 317% not 417%. He also made inappropriate representations of numbers. The 317% should have been 8% increase per year and the 25% difference is meaningless as both numbers are so close to zero. He could have used 0.24% difference in their measurement of prices and been closer. He used a gorilla example with the price of a newspaper as it has been the poster child of legitimate substitution affect. He used two food items to show near term inflation. There core rate of inflation doesn't include food for a reason and eggs have had really low inflation for the last century. Agreeing with Pethokoukis and Krug man that the main stream media is alarmed by movements from 1% to 1.5% inflation shows their point. He missed Pethokoukis point that radio gold bugs were preaching that inflation is currently near 5% vs. 2% a statement I doubt shared by Fisher or Paulson. Using a Picket quote of a near 5% threshold is either dishonest because looking at possibly getting to 3% using the government's numbers in a bad case scenarios or dishonest because picketty's quote has nothing to do with government sceptics persistent higher inflation that is currently near 5%. Are there long term inflation concerns and problems with government inflation measurements? Yes, but as long as people like Fisher and Yelled are on the FED, I won't be to worried about when we are at historically low inflation.

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