Ohio miners forced to attend Romney rally without pay...

[kandrathe]

They exist to do nothing more than provide support for conspiracy theorists who want to think the government is cooking the books about everything.

You often resort to this method of claiming "tinfoil" hat -- but, really? You think William Hunt "Bill" Gross (the co-founder of PIMCO) is a conspiracy theorist? The BLS is run by whom? You really need to stop following Krugman -- he really seems more of a partisan shill -- although, I will credit him for being critical of most anyone (except himself).

Why Inflation Seems To Have Sharper Teeth Than the CPI Suggests - WSJ While the gist of that article is that perception is not reality, I think the opposite for the exact same reasons. When an average desktop computer increases in price by 20% and they count it as a decrease because this one is 30% faster. The fact is, if my computer dies and I need a new computer, I need a computer. I could buy the obsolete model, but I would be screwing myself out of a year or two of future utility. Same with autos -- when you buy the same average model for the same utilitarian reasons and it costs more -- that is inflation. Sometimes, like with wrist watches, a commodity is a commodity and doesn't really change so much year over year. Then, you can measure apples to apples.

The fact is (or at least my analytical perspective is)... The books are cooked to make the government look good.

So, growth was high in 2008-2009, and should be slowing down now? Because that's what the graph tells me, if oil is what's driving all this...

Growth was high in the summer of 2008, until we hit the economic ceiling, and it contributed to the destabilization of the markets. The weak link was a market predicated on growth, so in that case, it helped to pop the real estate bubble. A bubble built by reckless borrowing, and ... a monetary policy which persistently attempted to keep short-term real interest rates low that eventually...