Comments on Fund My Mutual Fund: Airline Inflation?

@ rob - if you click on the inflation label on the...

2007-11-15T16:21:00.000-05:00

@ rob - if you click on the inflation label on the post you will see me go off on health care as well. Inflation is everywhere execpt in things like electronic goods (and now houses) but people have long term contracts (with houses) so they are stuck paying 2003-2006 values, even as the house falls so it does not help much. We have a lot of major issues and I try not to get into political or societal issues much, but suffice to say even Buffet was saying we are going the wrong direction yesterday in his estate tax commentary... we are turning into a plutoricity (however you spell it) I think the first half of the decade it was happening slower and middle class was using home to spend as they used to, (over their head), now it more out of need and they dont have that buffer anymore. So it could be ugly.

@msb - wow that 2nd article - EYE OPENING. I thought China was a safe haven?? Russia too! :) Just like Google was about $120 higher. When you constrain market forces (think our Fed), strains occur, and eventually bad things happen. And their financial system is nowhere near as 'developed' err (able to create new instruments to keep pushing off risk) as ours.

Here are some interesting inflation-related articl...

2007-11-15T15:04:00.000-05:00

Here are some interesting inflation-related articles I've seen recently:

Fed Plans to Increase Forecasts to Once a Quarter: Central bankers will also add predictions for a price gauge that includes food and energy costs and give a ``fuller discussion'' of members' projections...Fed officials will scrap projections of nominal gross domestic product, which is unadjusted for inflation. The nominal GDP forecasts ``now seem relatively less useful to the public'' given the addition of headline-inflation forecasts... Bernanke and several other Fed officials have said their ``comfort zone'' for that inflation gauge is 1 percent to 2 percent. The index rose 1.8 percent in September from a year before, the fourth straight month below 2 percent.

In Bernanke's congressional testimony last week, he said that the FOMC ``projected overall and core inflation to be in a range consistent with price stability next year.''

Inflation: China's least wanted export: When inflation starts to kill people then it is a serious problem. Three people died and 31 were injured on Saturday in a stampede to buy cut-price cooking oil in the western Chinese city of Chongqing. China can no longer explain away inflation as a short-term result of floods and epidemics of animal disease - nor can it ignore the strains its macroeconomic policies are producing.

Agreed Mark. And health care costs aren't exactl...

2007-11-15T14:10:00.000-05:00

Agreed Mark. And health care costs aren't exactly "contained" either, sad to say.