I had Omicron. Isolated ten days rather than the recommended 5. It was uncomfortable, especially day two, when I coughed and hacked a lot. Never got into my lungs. Eventually controlled the cough with Rx meds. Was weak for about a week - no pun intended - but am back on normal exercise routine, i.e., aerobics 2-3x a week + personal trainer 2x a week. All in all, not a very big deal. Only on the worst day did I feel like I was very sick.
I can see how an elderly person, or someone with comorbidities, would be much more affected than I was. Understand that having been jabbed 2x and boosted 1x probably lessened symptoms. All in all, a mostly minor nuisance that took me out of commission for about 2 weeks.
In another vein, here is excerpt from Butler's latest:
So, longtime readers know that I call the CPI (consumer price index) stupid… And I aways refer to the “hedonic adjustments”… And I do believe I’ve told you the story of how CPI became so stupid, right? Well, I’m going to touch on that story once again, and then tell you how the stupid BLS is changing another calculation in the CPI…
In the mid-90’s, then President Clinton called Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan to the Oval Office, and asked him why interest rates were so high… Greenspan explained that interest rates were high because inflation was high.. You see Clinton wanted interest rates low so that everyone could afford a house… So, Clinton gave Greenspan an order to find a way to lower inflation… Greenspan hired the Boston Commission, who devised a way…. Change the way the basket of goods are priced each month, by allowing substitutions and change of weightings of items in the basket… These two things are what I refer to when I call them “hedonic adjustments”… So, immediately there was a drop in CPI, due to the changes, and from then on if a T-Bone steak became too costly, the substitution allowed for the T-Bone to be taken out and hamburger replace it, and so on… Or, if the item in the basket became too pricey, they could change the weighting applied to the item…
This, I contend is the root of the Housing Bubble that began to build with the lower rates, that were artificially low because of the stupid CPI...
This is why I make such a big deal out of www.shadowstats.com and its proprietor, John Williams, who was a Government accountant back before the changes to CPI were made, and he decided to continue to calculate CPI the was it was done before the adjustments of Clinton and Greenspan. For Instance, CPI says consumer inflation is 7%, while Shadowstats.com says inflation is at 15.2%... Do you now see how the hedonic adjustments reduce the actual inflation number?
Well, thanks to my good friend, Dennis Miller, who by the way is doing much better these days, but remains in the woods, sent me this link to the info I’m about to give to you. It’s about the BLS and a new adjustment they are making, but this one is different, in that it will calculate the price of a new car correctly… Here’s the skinny, from Wolfstreet.com
“The BLS is going to switch to transaction-based prices for new vehicles. It purchases the data from J.D. Power. I have been producing charts with J.D. Power’s Average Transaction Prices for a while. The BLS will abandon the old survey-based method of asking dealers about the prices of hypothetical vehicle configuration. It will also make changes in the way it calculates the CPI for new vehicles.
The coming version of the CPI new vehicles spiked by 15.9% in December from a year earlier (red line), compared to the current version’s 11.8%, which had already been the biggest spike since 1975 (purple line).”
Quite interesting, no? I thought so, for the question arises, who’s side are they on? For years they (BLS) have played the game with the Gov’t, in telling lies about inflation, and now they are going to come clean on the new cars? Now before you think they’ve gone full on with coming clean, they have no plans to remove the hedonic adjustments… They remain in honor of Clinton and Greenspan… |
