You may remember a while back when money was valuable and you could put it in a bank for safekeeping. Well, no longer. Money value is getting trashed right now, along with the formerly safe banks. The value decline started in 1913, with the dollar today worth around 4 cents in equivalent purchasing power. And now banks are suddenly collapsing. Where is this mess headed next?
I read last week about the amazing half-million-plus jobs growth in January 2023. What great news! Or perhaps not. Maybe it is little more than an opinion. Or possibly a lie, or even a damned lie, or worst of all – a statistic. What is the difference between these, if any? And why does it matter to us normal folk?
The U.S. Federal Reserve Bank is hiking interest rates to reduce the currently high inflation rate. They also – sort of, maybe – stopped the money printing that causes inflation. Will it work? Will the Fed give up and reverse its direction? Economic crash, or hyperinflation, or both? Nobody, including the Fed, really knows. Huge impact on us normal folks. What if anything, can we do?
Inflation seems to be at the top of many folks minds these days. Prices going up on almost everything essential – food, fuel, housing. Economists define “inflation” as a sustained general increase in price levels – affecting virtually everything, but they classify price increases in relatively few items as simply local market price situations, not inflation. What is the inflation that we have today?
Inflation has become a huge concern lately. As defined both by products price increases and by money supply increases, inflation has jumped noticeably after many years of relative stability. Is this just yet another blip in our COVID-scrambled world, or something much worse? Why do we have inflation? What turns it into a potential monster? Pretty important questions today.
