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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tonto who wrote (726871)	2/20/2006 10:06:46 AM
From: Bill	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 769670

Inflation from the beginning of 1989 to end of 2005 would account for a 65% increase. If his house is worth 4x its 1989 value, the housing market must be doing a lot better than he thinks.

To: tonto who wrote (726871)	2/20/2006 12:55:11 PM
From: JBTFD	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

using the rates of inflation during the past 20 years First of all, the official inflation numbers are of relevance only to bureaucrats who are interested in keeping indexed costs down. Just like recently they are saying that inflation excluding food and energy is low. That is fine as long as one doesn't eat and doesn't need to travel or heat his house. But for those of us who do eat and heat our homes the inflation number excluding food and energy is just an exercise in abstraction. Another unrealistic factor in the official inflation numbers is that they don't track the cost of buying a home. They track the cost of renting a home. It's called owners equivalent rent. So the huge price rises in some areas will not show up in official inflation numbers until rents in those areas go up. Then there is hedonics and the substitution effect. If you don't get that CPI is a rigged number then go back to school or read on the net. There is an abundance of information for one who wants to learn. M3 is about 2 and a half times what it was in 1989. Bush has increased the national debt in 5 years more than Clinton did in 8 years.