By
Michael Snyder –
The Economic Collapse
October 30, 2013
If you believe that there
is high inflation in the United States, you are just imagining things. That
is the message that the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve would have
us to believe. You might have noticed that the government announced on
Wednesday that the cost of living increase for Social Security beneficiaries
will only
be 1.5 percent next year. This is one of the smallest cost of living
increases that we have ever seen. The federal government is able to get
away with this because the official numbers say that there is hardly any
inflation in the U.S. right now. Of course anyone that shops for groceries
or that pays bills regularly knows what a load of nonsense the official
inflation rate is. The U.S. government has changed the way that inflation
is calculated numerous times since 1978, and each time it has been changed
the goal has been to make inflation appear to be even lower. According to
John Williams of shadowstats.com, if the inflation rate was still calculated
the same way that it was back when Jimmy Carter was president, the official
rate of inflation would be somewhere between
8 and 10 percent today. But if the mainstream news actually reported
such a number, everyone would be screaming and yelling about getting
inflation under control. Instead, the super low number that gets put out to
the public makes it look like the Federal Reserve has plenty of room to do
even more reckless money printing. It is a giant scam, but most Americans
are falling for it.
Meanwhile, the prices of
the things that most Americans buy on a regular basis just keep going up.
The following are just a few examples of price inflation that we have seen
lately
-McDonalds has killed the
dollar menu because it is becoming impossible to make
any money selling burgers for $1.
But dont worry the
government says that the inflation you see is just your imagination.
-Amazon.com has raised the
minimum order size required for free shipping from
$25 to $35.
But dont worry you can
afford to order more stuff thanks to the great new job that you got during
this economic recovery.
-It is being projected that
those using natural gas to heat their homes will see their heating costs
rise by
13 percent this winter.
But dont worry global
warming should kick in to high gear any day now.
-The price of chocolate has
gone up by
45 percent since 2007, and it is being projected that it will now be
increasing at an even faster pace.
But dont worry eating
chocolate is bad for you anyway.
-Thanks to Obamacare, the
health insurance premiums of many American families are absolutely
skyrocketing. As I wrote about the
other day, one family down in Texas just got a letter informing them
that their health insurance premiums are going up by 539 percent.
But dont worry this is
just health care reform in action.
Meanwhile, things just
continue to get
tougher for middle class American families. Household incomes have
actually been declining for
five years in a row and total consumer credit has risen by a whopping 22
percentover the past three years.
The quality of our jobs
continues to go down and our paychecks are not keeping up with inflation.
In fact, 40 percent of all U.S. workers are now making less than what
a full-time minimum wage worker made back in 1968 after you account for
inflation.
So what do the
authorities say that the solution to our problems is?
They want even more
inflation of course. According to CNBC,
many Federal Reserve officials (including Janet Yellen) believe that what
the U.S. economy really needs is a lot more inflation
Inflation is widely reviled
as a kind of tax on modern life, but as Federal Reserve policy makers
prepare to meet this week, there is growing concern inside and outside the
Fed that inflation is not rising fast enough.
Some economists say more
inflation is just what the American economy needs to escape from a
half-decade of sluggish growth and high unemployment.
The Fed has worked for
decades to suppress inflation, but economists, including Janet Yellen,
President Obamas nominee to lead the Fed starting next year, have long
argued that a little inflation is particularly valuable when the economy is
weak. Rising prices help companies increase profits; rising wages help
borrowers repay debts. Inflation also encourages people and businesses to
borrow money and spend it more quickly.
The rest of that article
goes on and on about how wonderful inflation is for an economy and about how
the U.S. economy desperately needs some more of it.
Well, if that was actually
true, then the
Weimar Republic should have had one of the best economies in the history
of mankind.
But this inevitably happens
when a nation starts producing fiat currency that is backed by absolutely
nothing. There is always a temptation to just print a little bit more.
In the end, we are going to
be destroyed by our own foolishness. We have the de facto reserve currency
of the planet, and the rest of the world has trusted it for decades. But
now we are systematically destroying our currency, and the rest of the
globe is
looking on in horror.
If you want to see a very
good example of the impact that inflation has had on our economy in recent
years, just check out this amazing chart which shows what the Federal Reserves reckless policies
have done to the prices of commodities.
Ultimately, the U.S. dollar
will be destroyed, and we will have done it to ourselves.
Many people are attempting
to protect themselves against this inevitability by putting a lot of their
money into hard assets such as gold and silver, but before you do that you
might want to make sure that you dont have a vengeful spouse that will toss
it all into a dumpster someday. The following is from a recent New
York Post article
A Colorado man was so angry
at his ex-wife for divorcing him that he had the couples life savings of
$500,000 converted to gold then tossed it in a dumpster so she couldnt
have any of it, the Colorado
Springs Gazette reports.
In June, Earl Ray Jones,
52, of Divide, Colorado, was ordered by a judge to pay $3,000 a month to the
woman hed been married to for 25 years, so he pillaged the couples
retirement account and had it converted into 22 pounds worth of gold and
silver bars, the paper reports.
Jones claims he then tossed
the modern-day treasure into a dumpster behind a motel, where he had been
living temporarily, later telling the judge he had no money to give his
ex-wife, according to the paper.
Did that story make you
smile? It sure did the trick for me.
But that story is also a
picture of what the Federal Reserve is doing with our dollar.
Our currency has been used
for decades by almost everyone else around the planet. In fact, more U.S.
dollars are used outside of our country than inside of it.
But now the Federal Reserve
is systematically trashing the dollar and the rest of the globe is starting
to lose faith in it.
Instead of realizing their
mistakes, Fed officials say that we need to create even more inflation and
they just keep on wildly printing more money.
In the end, we will all pay
a great price for their foolishness.