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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bill meehan who wrote (67731)	9/15/1999 11:43:00 AM
From: Freedom Fighter	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Bill, >>Wayne, absolutely. While I am far from being an economist (thank God), it seems clear that the government's horde of dismal scientists have "improved" the data to the point that nobody knows what it's really measuring.<< Thanks.I can't help getting progressively suspicious of changes that keep making the performance of the country look better. Especially when I intuitively disagree with a lot of it and some economists are pointing out problems. It also benefits the government in terms of COLA expenditures, inflation adjusted bonds, and bracket creep tax increases. I have trouble with the idea of making investment decisions based on this stuff. Wayne

To: bill meehan who wrote (67731)	9/15/1999 11:59:00 AM
From: Don Lloyd	Respond to of 132070

Bill - (...This captures the effect, for example, of gasoline prices rising more than prices for all other goods, which causes consumers to ‘substitute' by buying less gasoline and more of all other goods...) Taken to its logical conclusion, the substitution measurement method will reduce to total consumption. Of course the entire exercise is a fiction. From pg 739, Man, Economy and State, Vol. 2, by M. N. Rothbard - "...The index-number method of measuring changes in the PPM [ Purchasing Power of Money ] attempts to conjure up some sort of totality of goods whose exchange ratios remain constant among themselves, so that a kind of general averaging will enable a separate measurement of changes in the PPM itself. We have seen, however, that such separation or measurement is impossible..." Regards, Don

To: bill meehan who wrote (67731)	9/15/1999 12:29:00 PM
From: PaperChase	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

Are you the Bill Meehan who is the big time analyst that I see quoted every now and then? You are very smart. Where do you find the time to post here?

To: bill meehan who wrote (67731)	9/15/1999 11:42:00 PM
From: Madharry	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

I have enjoyed your straight forward comments in the past and my wife loved your pasta and gatorade trade-off for gasoline. It is ironic that on the day the CPI was up such a small amount I went to the store to purchase a PIZZA and found that the price had increased from $2.09 to $2.59. I said to the store manager that that must be a mistake because the CPI numbers had just come out and showed there was virtually no inflation- but he refused to adjust the price. Perhaps the market is expressing is own disbelief at these numbers and I wonder if the Fed believes them?