Monday, June 20, 2022

Even A Broken Clock is Right Twice a Day!!

In this digital age, there will be many that do not understand a reference from way back in the age of analog clocks. But on to the meat of the matter, or where’s the beef?

After months of American citizens complaining about inflation, certain politicians have determined it is a problem and are focused upon the problem. We should also understand the “rest” of the world is also experiencing inflation.

Except there was rarely a peep, until the “rest” of the world caught up with the U.S.A.

Here is a nice graph with annual inflation rates since August 2021. (Click on Picture for larger view).

Eurostat is the source for the EU, France, Germany, as well as the harmonized inflation rate of the U.S. Oddly the U.S. is not in the EU and is tracked, yet U.K. no longer appears anywhere. Someone is taking Brexit very seriously, imo. The U.K. is represented by its own Office of National Statistics, which has both HCIP and CPI. Then Canada data is taken from Statistics Canada. (I estimated the Eurostat numbers for the U.S. at 9.1%, but put 8.8% on this chart/graph to be safe on the low side).

Here is a chart as well...


There does seem to be inflation in these countries, but they are just now joining the inflation party, we have been experiencing for several months. As they say… numbers don’t lie, but politicians do. In this case, our politicians may not be lying, but have put off telling the truth until it could be spun as impacting a lot of countries. 

Clearly, we can see the impact of the natural gas pricing in the EU and UK, as well as the impact of the Ukraine invasion, for all including Canada. The U.S. can certainly join in the chorus blaming Putin, but what about the earlier periods, when both the EU and the UK were experiencing less inflation than the United States?

Why wasn’t inflation an issue then? Did our politicians need to wait for someone else to blame and then proclaim it's not my fault, everyone is having high inflation?

Hey, it will probably work... given the short attention span of most Americans. 

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