For the 10 year period of 1998-2007, calculated the first week of April vs. first week of March, gasoline prices averaged a monthly increase of 7.3%. In 2008 in the same period they rose 5.4%. Thus on this calculation 1.9% less than average.
So, Pisani has correctly explained the "seasonally adjusted" issue. But again, for "real" purposes year-over-year calculations are generally what you want to look at.
The government reported that gasoline prices in April were down 2 percent when "seasonally adjusted." How could this be, when we know prices went up at the pump?
Here's how it happened:
1) The actual increase in gasoline prices was 5.6%.
2) But the government statistics indicate that gasoline tends to rise by 7.6% in April.
3) But because they rose less than that--5.6%--gasoline was reported to be down 2 percent "seasonally adjusted"
It has to do with the phrase "seasonally adjusted." The government adjusts numbers to remove the impact of regular events that occur at the same time every year--like increases in gas prices in April, or the effect of cold weather on housing starts.
What Pisani says makes perfect sense if it's true. Is it? Well, I went to the BLS site and calculated the average change in the CPI for energy alone (note: this is not specifically gas)in the 10 previous years. The average change in April was +3.1%. The change this year was +4.2%. If I find the information for gasoline specifically, I'll post it.
When I look at CPI, I ignore the seasonally adjusted numbers, and usually I just want to know the year-over-year comparisons.
I posted yesterday in the forum about how the G7 were now manipulating the markets in masse. On the trading boards there are many posters say to buy on bad news, sell on good news for seemingly that is how the market is reacting these days.
18 YEARS, well, now Im awaiting New Deal's cyclical inflation evidence/analysis on that one. I like the fact New Deal will research that out, but so far I'm not convinced this is at all cyclical. Your piece of data needs some xplainin'.
Clinton on each one of her policy positions has the details on how to pay for it, whereas Obama's show there is a major deficit financially. That's what bonddad's post is all about.
I would also say that Clinton has the better plan for working folks overall on health care, jobs, trade.
I wanted to make a new blog post, but the BLS site is apparently overwhelmed, so I haven't been able to download updated charts.
The April CPI is noteworthy in two respects: (1) the overall CPI is again at under 4% year-over-year, less than its recent peak 6 months ago of 4.3%; and (2) the rate of food inflation has abated significantly in the last few months. This doesn't mean that food prices aren't going up, it means that they are going up less than they were before. That is significant because as I've analyzed previous oil-shock induced recessions, food inflation peaks first, before energy and typically before the overall rate, both of which tend to peak about 3-6 months into the recession.
I went looking to find the raw data, spread sheets, anything and I cannot find this. Unfortunately our numbers wonk is out until Sept. (Charles McMillion). but I did find 2006 article talking about manipulation of retail sales figures.
My quess is there is "seasonal adjustment" to some sort of inflation manipulation to get that low numbers when it sure looks to me like auto sales indeed took a nose dive.
I also know that auto financing is now harder to get and repos, people cannot make their car payments has had a massive increase.
Anybody know if/where the actual raw stats are posted, this should get interesting.
Maybe the trouble is they know we're not so dumb so getting the raw stats they make more impossible.
There are so many companies who insist, when it's not necessary, everyone come in at the same time, leave at the same time. They do use timing on some of the highway routing, and some custom GPS will give you alternative routes when the traffic is backed up.
But, I agree the long commutes are an obvious situation costing people frustration, time, money, fuel and employers are one of the worst causes.
On the most expensive BJ in history, Bill mentioned his wife shouldn't have married him, like he has guilt that he destroyed her political career.
Nice Note. Bill Clinton is a political policy wonk genius, who unfortunately couldn't restrain himself from getting the world's most expensive b*** **b.
Anyway, whenever yours truly is sitting in a slowly moving parking lot called the freeway during the morning commute, I can't help thinking that if computer chips can now keep cars a safe distance from the car in front of them (as is available on some higher end cars), why couldn't the chips be programmed to move traffic along these expressways with minimum delays (taking advantage of computer programs already in existence), to their destinations preprogrammed into their nav systems?
For the price of embedding the chip in lower end cars, and some extra programming, we could probably save $millions in wasted fuel from rush hour commutes daily.
I have to add a damn blog roll on here, I have to make it, why I'm not returning the favor, but I truly appreciate that. The others on here are writing exceptional stuff. Even if you disagree with them, the time they spend, the research, the analysis is fantastic.
I have to agree. What exactly are they fighting for if not dramatic policy change?
But, on the other hand, it is so much easier to just write opinion or jump on some cultural bandwagon and say "me too!" On every post, it can take hours to check your statistics and facts. ;) So much easy just to chant the mantra change, change, change. I think we both asked change to what and got a couple of bad ratings over it.
....and others at my Drinking Liberally, Oakland meetups. You are also linked on my sidebar, and....
I link to the best of the posts here.
And...
I drive everybody nuts explaining again and again and again that ID politics ala Bowers, Kos and Marshall is a trap that the Republicans have used for over 50 years now to divert people's attention from the stuff that matters....
Policy.
Economics policy, while difficult to parse the facts at times, gets people's attention. As it is about....
Money.
You should see the reaction I get when I lay the Pareto Rule on them!
They go nuts! All in all it's big fun, educational and gets the Ol' brain working....
The money you see; folks are very, very interested in money.
....entrenched incompetents of what used to be called The Establishment or the self-styled natterers of the 'creative class', Bowers are ya listening, want to discuss in public.
Folks might realize the utter bankruptcy of our entire society. Socially, economically, sustainablly we are done. It's going to take a massive effort to escape the 'Oldavai Gorge' on the other side of Peak Oil.
Ah well.....
Perhaps the advent of $8.00/gal gas will get folks attention.
....and it's no accident nor coincidence that the folks in the corporatist media and the vast majority of Left Blogistan are not talking policy.
The only candidate that actually knows anything about what was at one time a significant factor in any selection of a national politician for office, policy, has been mercilessly reviled as...a woman...a racist...a rich person....and so on. What has happened is that the 'know-nothings' of the Reichwing have succeeded. We now have 'Democrats' campaigning on ' faith' just as Republicans have for many years. To top it off the populace is now so dumbed down as to be incapable of following a detailed argument about the Pareto Rule or 'marginal tax rates'. Sickening is what it is.
We do have what looks like a powerful emetic, if exploited properly coming down the pipe.....
Economic catastrophe.
I spent a couple of hours talking about the biggest story to break last week, no it was not about Hillary being a Bitch, with a casual acquaintance last night. The story,the projection of gas rising to $8.00/gal in the near term. Every industry which relies upon disposable income will tank. And that's a lot of jobs gone too.
If...
If that happens you will see an upheaval in this country not seen since the 'Bank Holiday' that was in place when FDR took office. And....
People will be looking for answers to the problems they will face. The amazing thing is we, as a society, have the answers. They've just been buried by the money and power of Big Oil.
As for Barry the Ignorant....his campaign is almost over...once the public gets a real close look at him trying to unload the snake oil and....
Realize he has no clue about how to fix the problems we face....
Are you suggesting that unpegging will end agflation? While I can see your argument that the US monetizing its debt has sparked this problem, I think you are ignoring some fundamentals of world population and supply. All of your arguments could be equally applied to oil. But peak oil (currently occurred in May 2005) was not a result of any central banking scheme. Similarly the crisis in food represents something fundamental - many nations do not produce enough food to feed themselves.
Whatever your trading scheme its difficult to get one nation to permanently feed another. Eventually even oil can be substituted with electric cars and mass transit. Basic national building blocks like food and energy are not well designed for a global economy. World trade should have been more about intellectual property and manufactured goods. Any kind of a shortage was bound to blow the whole system up; in fact we can argue the opposite direction - imbalances in trade caused the housing bubble. America was too deep in global trade debt to be able to afford to raise interest rates. And there is no way China would have so aggressively allowed American debt if food and oil had not been on the table.
I'm also hearing about how this is good for the globalization agenda but I'm suspecting more we are simply trading places with 3rd world nations. i.e. the fruition of the race to the bottom is coming to pass where we have more and more homeless, people who are hungry, cannot get basic health care and most importantly cannot get a living wage job. I am seeing advanced skilled jobs going for 10-20 dollars and hour now, no benefits, not even employee to obtain unemployment insurance.
I need to research this to see the truth of it but it sure seems like we are simply being siphoned off and your post just increases my belief that we are not raising any other nation up but instead we're going down and the rest of the world will go down with us.
In March, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. began investigating whether the Countrywide Financial Corporation, the troubled mortgage giant, misrepresented its financial condition and loans in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Heh. From what I've seen, the SEC/FBI doesn't mind if you cook the books. The real crime is losing Wall Street's money--that's when people start going to jail.
at least more often than not. Heck, we see examples of that right here in the USA in some red states.
I should clarify that I'm not advocating confrontation with the autocratic states. I'm making a somewhat more limited point that economic integration does not necessarily lead to a democratic society. The two can be intertwined but in no sense can it be shown that one leads to the other.
BTW, I left a truncated version of this blog entry at TPM Cafe. Apparently cutting of the main thesis off this week's book at the knees, is too much for their delicate psyches, because they've refused to post the comment so far.
The statistics come from the Energy Information Administration (EIA).
For the 10 year period of 1998-2007, calculated the first week of April vs. first week of March, gasoline prices averaged a monthly increase of 7.3%. In 2008 in the same period they rose 5.4%. Thus on this calculation 1.9% less than average.
So, Pisani has correctly explained the "seasonally adjusted" issue. But again, for "real" purposes year-over-year calculations are generally what you want to look at.
Here's what Bob Pisani of CNBC had to say:
What Pisani says makes perfect sense if it's true. Is it? Well, I went to the BLS site and calculated the average change in the CPI for energy alone (note: this is not specifically gas)in the 10 previous years. The average change in April was +3.1%. The change this year was +4.2%. If I find the information for gasoline specifically, I'll post it.
When I look at CPI, I ignore the seasonally adjusted numbers, and usually I just want to know the year-over-year comparisons.
Look to Mars, then turn right and go up Uranus.
I posted yesterday in the forum about how the G7 were now manipulating the markets in masse. On the trading boards there are many posters say to buy on bad news, sell on good news for seemingly that is how the market is reacting these days.
18 YEARS, well, now Im awaiting New Deal's cyclical inflation evidence/analysis on that one. I like the fact New Deal will research that out, but so far I'm not convinced this is at all cyclical. Your piece of data needs some xplainin'.
And if you are really interested in the solution, and I do mean the solution, to our transportation fuel costs zip on over to:
The Solar Grand Plan
100% of all our electrical energy needs, 90% of all our energy needs, uses off the shelf tech, costs $420 Billion.
Why have I never heard of this you ask?
Why do you think?
Clinton on each one of her policy positions has the details on how to pay for it, whereas Obama's show there is a major deficit financially. That's what bonddad's post is all about.
I would also say that Clinton has the better plan for working folks overall on health care, jobs, trade.
Each one of their sites has the details.
I wanted to make a new blog post, but the BLS site is apparently overwhelmed, so I haven't been able to download updated charts.
The April CPI is noteworthy in two respects: (1) the overall CPI is again at under 4% year-over-year, less than its recent peak 6 months ago of 4.3%; and (2) the rate of food inflation has abated significantly in the last few months. This doesn't mean that food prices aren't going up, it means that they are going up less than they were before. That is significant because as I've analyzed previous oil-shock induced recessions, food inflation peaks first, before energy and typically before the overall rate, both of which tend to peak about 3-6 months into the recession.
It's all about oil now.
How is Obama econimic policy not workable when he clearly has the best plan for average working folks?
I went looking to find the raw data, spread sheets, anything and I cannot find this. Unfortunately our numbers wonk is out until Sept. (Charles McMillion). but I did find 2006 article talking about manipulation of retail sales figures.
My quess is there is "seasonal adjustment" to some sort of inflation manipulation to get that low numbers when it sure looks to me like auto sales indeed took a nose dive.
I also know that auto financing is now harder to get and repos, people cannot make their car payments has had a massive increase.
Anybody know if/where the actual raw stats are posted, this should get interesting.
Maybe the trouble is they know we're not so dumb so getting the raw stats they make more impossible.
There are so many companies who insist, when it's not necessary, everyone come in at the same time, leave at the same time. They do use timing on some of the highway routing, and some custom GPS will give you alternative routes when the traffic is backed up.
But, I agree the long commutes are an obvious situation costing people frustration, time, money, fuel and employers are one of the worst causes.
On the most expensive BJ in history, Bill mentioned his wife shouldn't have married him, like he has guilt that he destroyed her political career.
Nice Note. Bill Clinton is a political policy wonk genius, who unfortunately couldn't restrain himself from getting the world's most expensive b*** **b.
Anyway, whenever yours truly is sitting in a slowly moving parking lot called the freeway during the morning commute, I can't help thinking that if computer chips can now keep cars a safe distance from the car in front of them (as is available on some higher end cars), why couldn't the chips be programmed to move traffic along these expressways with minimum delays (taking advantage of computer programs already in existence), to their destinations preprogrammed into their nav systems?
For the price of embedding the chip in lower end cars, and some extra programming, we could probably save $millions in wasted fuel from rush hour commutes daily.
I have to add a damn blog roll on here, I have to make it, why I'm not returning the favor, but I truly appreciate that. The others on here are writing exceptional stuff. Even if you disagree with them, the time they spend, the research, the analysis is fantastic.
I have to agree. What exactly are they fighting for if not dramatic policy change?
But, on the other hand, it is so much easier to just write opinion or jump on some cultural bandwagon and say "me too!" On every post, it can take hours to check your statistics and facts. ;) So much easy just to chant the mantra change, change, change. I think we both asked change to what and got a couple of bad ratings over it.
....and others at my Drinking Liberally, Oakland meetups. You are also linked on my sidebar, and....
I link to the best of the posts here.
And...
I drive everybody nuts explaining again and again and again that ID politics ala Bowers, Kos and Marshall is a trap that the Republicans have used for over 50 years now to divert people's attention from the stuff that matters....
Policy.
Economics policy, while difficult to parse the facts at times, gets people's attention. As it is about....
Money.
You should see the reaction I get when I lay the Pareto Rule on them!
They go nuts! All in all it's big fun, educational and gets the Ol' brain working....
The money you see; folks are very, very interested in money.
Can't imagine why.
Fortunately over here we have people digging into the details on policy, so as you see those bloggers, I hope you tell them about this site.
....entrenched incompetents of what used to be called The Establishment or the self-styled natterers of the 'creative class', Bowers are ya listening, want to discuss in public.
Folks might realize the utter bankruptcy of our entire society. Socially, economically, sustainablly we are done. It's going to take a massive effort to escape the 'Oldavai Gorge' on the other side of Peak Oil.
Ah well.....
Perhaps the advent of $8.00/gal gas will get folks attention.
....and it's no accident nor coincidence that the folks in the corporatist media and the vast majority of Left Blogistan are not talking policy.
The only candidate that actually knows anything about what was at one time a significant factor in any selection of a national politician for office, policy, has been mercilessly reviled as...a woman...a racist...a rich person....and so on. What has happened is that the 'know-nothings' of the Reichwing have succeeded. We now have 'Democrats' campaigning on ' faith' just as Republicans have for many years. To top it off the populace is now so dumbed down as to be incapable of following a detailed argument about the Pareto Rule or 'marginal tax rates'. Sickening is what it is.
We do have what looks like a powerful emetic, if exploited properly coming down the pipe.....
Economic catastrophe.
I spent a couple of hours talking about the biggest story to break last week, no it was not about Hillary being a Bitch, with a casual acquaintance last night. The story,the projection of gas rising to $8.00/gal in the near term. Every industry which relies upon disposable income will tank. And that's a lot of jobs gone too.
If...
If that happens you will see an upheaval in this country not seen since the 'Bank Holiday' that was in place when FDR took office. And....
People will be looking for answers to the problems they will face. The amazing thing is we, as a society, have the answers. They've just been buried by the money and power of Big Oil.
As for Barry the Ignorant....his campaign is almost over...once the public gets a real close look at him trying to unload the snake oil and....
Realize he has no clue about how to fix the problems we face....
He's done.
Are you suggesting that unpegging will end agflation? While I can see your argument that the US monetizing its debt has sparked this problem, I think you are ignoring some fundamentals of world population and supply. All of your arguments could be equally applied to oil. But peak oil (currently occurred in May 2005) was not a result of any central banking scheme. Similarly the crisis in food represents something fundamental - many nations do not produce enough food to feed themselves.
Whatever your trading scheme its difficult to get one nation to permanently feed another. Eventually even oil can be substituted with electric cars and mass transit. Basic national building blocks like food and energy are not well designed for a global economy. World trade should have been more about intellectual property and manufactured goods. Any kind of a shortage was bound to blow the whole system up; in fact we can argue the opposite direction - imbalances in trade caused the housing bubble. America was too deep in global trade debt to be able to afford to raise interest rates. And there is no way China would have so aggressively allowed American debt if food and oil had not been on the table.
I'm also hearing about how this is good for the globalization agenda but I'm suspecting more we are simply trading places with 3rd world nations. i.e. the fruition of the race to the bottom is coming to pass where we have more and more homeless, people who are hungry, cannot get basic health care and most importantly cannot get a living wage job. I am seeing advanced skilled jobs going for 10-20 dollars and hour now, no benefits, not even employee to obtain unemployment insurance.
I need to research this to see the truth of it but it sure seems like we are simply being siphoned off and your post just increases my belief that we are not raising any other nation up but instead we're going down and the rest of the world will go down with us.
will link to it ASAP. This is the sort of clear factual analysis folks need to make good decisions.
Keep it up!
In March, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. began investigating whether the Countrywide Financial Corporation, the troubled mortgage giant, misrepresented its financial condition and loans in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Heh. From what I've seen, the SEC/FBI doesn't mind if you cook the books. The real crime is losing Wall Street's money--that's when people start going to jail.
at least more often than not. Heck, we see examples of that right here in the USA in some red states.
I should clarify that I'm not advocating confrontation with the autocratic states. I'm making a somewhat more limited point that economic integration does not necessarily lead to a democratic society. The two can be intertwined but in no sense can it be shown that one leads to the other.
BTW, I left a truncated version of this blog entry at TPM Cafe. Apparently cutting of the main thesis off this week's book at the knees, is too much for their delicate psyches, because they've refused to post the comment so far.
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