Surprise, surprise, right on schedule progressive Robert Kuttner attacks the 2 percent inflation target in favor of 4 percent

 It all sounds very persuasive, as long as you forget how inflation impoverishes the lower classes and keeps them down so that the elites can continue to milk them like slaves year after year. 4% just does it twice as fast as 2%.

The little people are an afterthought to the left.

This is the "inflation is actually good" talk you hear from lefties from time to time.

Story here.

US Federal Reserve continues to fail against deflationary headwinds

Bloomberg reports here:

The Fed needs a clear strategy for getting the inflation rate higher after falling short of its 2 percent target for 28 consecutive months. ...

Prices fell 1.2 percent for the 12 months ending in July 2009, when the economy had just exited the recession, according to the inflation measure the Fed uses, the personal consumption expenditures price index. Unemployment that month was 9.5 percent. Since Fed officials first published their inflation target in January 2012, the index has averaged 1.5 percent. ...

The 2 percent inflation objective first appeared in a January 2012 statement on longer-run policy goals, and has been restated each January since. The statements say nothing about tactics for returning inflation to 2 percent over the medium term.


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The all-items consumer price index shows the same thing, with the average of the annual average change at just +1.59% for each of the five years 2009-2013. In the most recently completed year, 2013, the change from 2012 was just +1.46%. And year over year on August 1, 2014, the change has been just +1.69%.

Despite a balance sheet for all Federal Reserve banks which appears to have peaked at $4.459 trillion on September 24th as QE prepares to end and excess reserves only slightly off peak at $2.677 trillion, inflation is slim to none in this economy, and slim just left the building.

In point of fact, these numbers are nearly meaningless in the face of the real deflation in the economy, which has nothing to do with prices but with credit. Total credit market debt is hardly expanding at all. Compared to the post-war record, where credit creation has doubled on average about every eight years, we have hit a brick wall since 2007.

At that time total credit market debt outstanding stood at $50 trillion. Seven years later it is barely $57.5 trillion, and there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that next year it will be at $100 trillion or anywhere close to that.

What we are witnessing is the unraveling of the post-war credit based economy, and no one seems to have a clue how to fix that, least of all the US Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve Couldn't Hit A Bull In The Ass With A Sack Of Peaches, Let Alone Target The Inflation Rate

The all items CPI had climbed to 219.016 on July 1, 2008 and didn't surpass that level again until October 1, 2010 at 219.024. The deflationary gale of the Great Recession blew for 27 months.

The collapse in prices in the five months from July 2008 through November 2008 was 3.48%, after rising in 2007 by 4.29%, a spread of 7.77 points.

So much for inflation targeting by the Federal Reserve, which couldn't hit a bull in the ass with a sack of peaches.

In 2012 and 2013, despite explicitly targeting the rate at 2%, the Fed could only come up with 1.6% and 1.56% respectively, suggesting that deflationary winds remain a problem.