I just saw this headline at Yahoo Finance: "Inflation data 'already out of date:' White House downplays CPI expectations" and for some reason was reminded of this article (I think at that time it was written the powers-that-be had moved from "There is no inflation" to "There is inflation but it is transitory" or maybe we were in the "lumber and used cars" phase, but definitely before "Peak inflation". Anyhoo, from Simon Black's Sovereign Man, August 10, 2021:
Once upon a time… 1% inflation was a major emergency
In the year 1202 in the town of Albi in southern France, the local market price for a measure of wheat was 34 grams of silver.
Decades later in the year 1290, the price of wheat was exactly the same: 34 grams of silver.
And even centuries after that, in the year 1527, the price of wheat in Albi, France was little changed at 35 grams of silver.
Price stability was actually quite common in the medieval era; of course there would be short-term price fluctuations due to war, weather, or other anomalies. But over the long run prices tended to stay the same…
… unless the government got involved and screwed everything up.
And that’s exactly what happened across nearly the entire European continent in the late Middle Ages.
Starting sometime between the late 1400s and mid 1500s, prices in Europe began to rise; these weren’t the ‘normal’ short-term price fluctuations, but rather a sustained, long-term inflationary rise in prices.
Between 1500 and 1600, for example, the price of wheat rose 200% in France. And it rose 300% in Germany.
Eggs cost less than 1 penny per dozen in England in the year 1500. By 1570 the same quantity cost more than 4 pence.
There were plenty of reasons for this inflation, ranging from the Spanish Empire flooding the continent with gold and silver it had mined from Latin America, to Henry VIII’s ‘Great Debasement’ of English currency.
But the larger point is that this roughly century-long period of inflation was so significant that modern historians even have a name for it– “The Price Revolution”.
Here’s what’s remarkable, though. On an annualized basis, inflation during the Price Revolution only averaged about 1% to 1.5% per year.
That’s right. Even if inflation is just 1% per year, prices will nearly triple after a century.
And that’s the amazing part– a mere century of 1% to 1.5% annual price increases was considered a huge deal back then… and historically significant.
Yet in our modern world we’ve been led to believe that 2% inflation is ‘normal’.
Moreover, inflation has been surging all over the world. In Germany, inflation hit 3.8% last month, the highest level in decades. Inflation in Australia and New Zealand has also risen to their highest levels in at least a decade.
Brazil, Russia, South Africa, Canada, etc. all show inflation rates at multi-year, if not multi-decade highs.
Yet most governments and central banks have been conspicuously dismissive of their rising inflation figures, using words like ‘transient’ to insist that prices will eventually moderate.
Inflation in the United States is currently 5.4%– and just like most of the world, that’s the highest level in years....
....MUCH MORE
5.4%.
How high must tomorrow's number be if the Administration and their sycophants—I've seen the "backward-looking" pitch a half-dozen places this week; (of course it's backward-looking, all data is backward-looking)—how high do they fear it is?
8.5%?....8.7%?.... 9%?
Saying data is backward-looking is a tautology. A tautology is not an argument.
