An alert pal commented yesterday on the topic of numbers. They are all wrong, as you are probably aware. Well, they are saying this is going to be the hottest week of the year, and I do have a relative confidence in the sweat factor of Northern Virginia. But specifically, Mr. Bernanke at the Federal Reserve is backing off his plans to end Quantitative Easing, the endless printing of fresh greenbacks.

Wall Street is happy, and all is right with the world. According to Big Ben, inflation is actually too low. He says it is about 1%, and he would like to see it a little higher.

The bureaucrats have to say things like that to keep us quiet. Long ago they quietly dropped the prices for food and oil out of the commodities they use to report inflation. The rational was something along the lines of “gas and corn are too volatile” to make for reliable reporting. If you eat or drive, you are aware that this is nonsense. Of course it is volatile. And the prices of food and gas (and college educations) is zooming. If we used the same criteria used in the days of Jimmy Carter’s Administration, inflation would be around 8%, which is wholesale and invisible theft.

If we reported the unemployment numbers, always a dodgy game, the real rate would be around 10%. In any other universe, we might be having a discussion about the impact of long-term joblessness on society. Things like the reinforcement of a permanent underclass that is growing as quality employment opportunities decline.

We have not talked about the debt in quite a while. The market is good with the cooked books, and there are more part-time crappy jobs being created as employers scramble to avoid the more onerous requirements of the Affordable Care Act. I guess things are just fine, and now we can worry about comprehensive immigration reform that will establish a path to citizenship for people who did not have the courtesy of respecting our laws.

That’s fine- we are not paying attention to our laws, either. The troublesome House is making things inconvenient to actually follow the Constitution, so the Administration has to rule by decree. It is sort of amazing that major provisions of law can be suspended and announced on a web site. This is very cool. Think of the things we can ignore!

I applaud the bipartisan effort to eliminate the truth from public discourse. Both parties are guilty of that, though I must say the current Administration takes the dissolution of the truth to altogether new heights. These days, I go with the assumption that everything I am told is wrong. But I agree with the President: it makes things so much easier, don’t you think?

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com