The Reality of Numbers

I find I must present a ‘mea culpa’ to one of my Exercise partners, because I told him at last Conversation that American Oil consumption would be down 3.4% (a most hoped-for Target) this year, but the Energy Dept. says a loss of 330,000/Day, something less than a 1% decline. I could claim a defense in that Energy estimates are traditionally erratic at best, or suggest I was surrendering to Wistful thinking. Instead, I have decided to take a aggressive and belligerent attitude, and provoke an angry Rebuttal with the Statement: Energy Dept. officials have been ordered to play down Consumption declines, to hide the per barrel Profits of the Energy giants; Americans have never rioted over the Price of Food, but are known fanatics over Gas Prices. I would suspect that 330,000barrels/Day is the amount which cannot be hidden by reduced Refinery production. Why do I think it is ‘Little Bush’ at Work?

Read this article by David Leonhardt, and I will seem like even more of a Crank. Inflation is only showing up in those Prices for Product on which We are likely to spend half Our Income, while the Prices of Products on which We are reducing Our Consumption are seemingly dropping in Price. This could well be true–it holding some type of economic rationale. There could be a flawed economic concept involved, though; an overactive Imagination could even propose that Inflation readings should be scaled for enjoined Consumption Demand reductions, due to the pricing of heavy Demand Products (Translation: Production reduction due to Consumption Demand reductions because of fundamentals Pricing should be accounted as an Inflation Cost–basically added, not subtracted). Such idiom would make Core Inflation the Enemy of the People, not a sick Cousin who must be nursed to health.

Here is another Piece to please the Heart of all! It seems We are paying Labor less than expected this Year, now that both Core Inflation and Consumer Basket Inflation are about twice and four times as high as the Unit labor Costs for the consumed Product. Does my tirade today make me appear as a wild-eyed Communist fanatic? Could I be risking my amiable Relations with both the Austrian School of Economics, and Strikebreakers of the Pinkertons? It must go back to my Irish/German, Working Class Roman Catholic conservative upbringing, which has been angry ever since the Irish Potato Famine. lgl