How To Lie About Inflation

The Feds have a number of techniques by which they can 'manage' numbers to the advantage (or disadvantage) of the current Regime.  Earlier this year we mentioned that the GDP had been goosed by the Feds by not logging in the December imports--which would have reduced GDP.

Now, they're managing the inflation numbers by "weighting."

...the BLS readjusted the weighting for relative price importance, putting added weight to urban economic priorities (ie. food at restaurants), which indicates their intent to downplay the scale of inflation overall.  The topline statistic of 7.5% annual inflation (year over year) is bad; however, because of weighting that figure belies the bigger issue, it’s actually much worse.  In January alone inflation jumped 0.8% (unadjusted), primarily driven by the first-round of 2022 consumer inflation that preexisted since early December 2021....

 ...You can see the statistical smoothing to present the softest inflation data by looking at Food at Home, Meats, Poultry and Fish.  The actual rate of inflation in that category is 40%+ at retail.  The BLS deemphasizes the price increase by putting less economic importance on the category and they come up with a 12.2% increase, one third of the actual price we are feeling....

In the near future, a grocery may have to call the husband to 'redeem' the wife--held captive by the grocer for a larger payment.  Let's hope that the husband can come up with the cash.