Food Inflation Experiment +

[jarhead1976]

Message deleted by jarhead1976.

[decoy409]

Must be something to live in a oblivious no inflation world. On Fantasy Island guess that is there too ,

June 12,2012 - 'The U.S. cattle herd has shrunk to the smallest since three years before Ray Kroc opened his first McDonald’s Corp. (MCD) (MCD) hamburger stand, reducing supply and raising prices even as domestic demand sinks to a two-decade low.'

excerpt - “The U.S. beef-cattle herd is at its lowest level in 50 or 60 years at the same time that global consumption of increased protein content and quality foods is rising,”

www.businessweek.com/news/2012-06-11/pink-slime-no-brake-to-beef-rally-as-herd-contracts-commodities

June 8,2012 - Cattle Prices

beefmagazine.com/markets/cattle-price

Ahh,not to mention the major cases coming forth from the poisoning of the cattle. Don't think that would affect those numbers by chance do you?

(todays POST - 5 million plus law suits in on the pack. Think Vilsack can keep up? OPPS! We meant Monsanto.

June 14,2012 - Syngenta Charged for Covering up Livestock Deaths from GM Corn

farmwars.info/?p=8630)

[Driftr]

Jun 14, 2012 22:13:39 GMT -5 @patstab said:

I heard today that beef prices, I'm assuming wholesale is almost $5 a pound, all time high.

Should get interesting on that.

I know as far as seeds are concerned I'm having some germination problems anymore and having to replant. Not sure what is going on with that.

My garden has been ok this year, not the greates but I've canned some just not a lot. Made freezer slaw for the first time and canned tomato soup. It's delicious hope to get enough tomatoes to make another batch, they are very poor this year, stink bugs eating them up and nothing kills the buggers.

I cheated on my garden this year. Tried one of those Burpee things where you pre-grow. Never again. Only five plants came up and I suck at replanting them. 3 of 5 are probably not going to make it. Straight in the ground for me from now on.

Blackberry bush added this year produced a LOT of blackberries, but has the bad side effect of making store bought blackberries taste so bland that the kids don't even want to eat them any more. I grabbed a couple ripe berries off when no one was looking and tried planting them by the bush. No idea if more will come or if I wasted a couple.

[kman]

I always eat Bison..better for ya anyway. Beef is overrated...Demand is down because of product quality...add some More pink slime....Kind of like ethanol in your gas..just a cheap filler.

[reasonfreedom]

Jun 15, 2012 12:02:37 GMT -5 @wxyz said:

Cattle prices and as a result beef prices ARE NOT due to inflation or even a symptom or sign of inflation. They are due to the drought last year and last summer. People that live in "cow and calf" operation areas like I do knew that beef prices were going to go sky high this year. Why, because a year ago everyone was selling their cows to the feed lots because they did not have any pasture and could not afford or find feed. Everyone around here sold off their breeding stock. So now there is a shortage of beef. Classic economic supply and demand theory.

That is not the case for N.C. and S.C., where I go to multiple beef farmers. They say the price increase was because of fuel cost. So in my area it is because of inflation.

[Deleted]

Jun 19, 2012 9:43:20 GMT -5 reasonfreedom said:

Jun 15, 2012 12:02:37 GMT -5 @wxyz said:

Cattle prices and as a result beef prices ARE NOT due to inflation or even a symptom or sign of inflation. They are due to the drought last year and last summer. People that live in "cow and calf" operation areas like I do knew that beef prices were going to go sky high this year. Why, because a year ago everyone was selling their cows to the feed lots because they did not have any pasture and could not afford or find feed. Everyone around here sold off their breeding stock. So now there is a shortage of beef. Classic economic supply and demand theory.

That is not the case for N.C. and S.C., where I go to multiple beef farmers. They say the price increase was because of fuel cost. So in my area it is because of inflation.

Here in north central Ar. it's due to the lack of rain. Since last summer hay yields have only been about 1/3 of the usual amount, driving the price up. Just about all the feedlot operations have shut down. Only the large ranches still have cattle, but at a reduced count. The county wide cattle census is down almost 40%.

[reasonfreedom]

Jun 19, 2012 11:12:48 GMT -5 @jma23 said:

Jun 19, 2012 9:43:20 GMT -5 reasonfreedom said:

That is not the case for N.C. and S.C., where I go to multiple beef farmers. They say the price increase was because of fuel cost. So in my area it is because of inflation.

Here in north central Ar. it's due to the lack of rain. Since last summer hay yields have only been about 1/3 of the usual amount, driving the price up. Just about all the feedlot operations have shut down. Only the large ranches still have cattle, but at a reduced count. The county wide cattle census is down almost 40%.

Looks like the beef market is affected by nature and inflation.

[reasonfreedom]

I used to work at Mcdonald's when I was 20 and the price of a big mac meal was 3.17 after taxes. now it is close to 6.00, that is 13 years with almost double the price.

[Deleted]

I just used up the last of my "Hotshot" insect foggers from May of 2009 (I date the boxes). They cost $5.47 for a package of 4 (Walmart) and each fogger covers 6,000 Cu/ft. Last week I bought 3 more packs of 4 for $5.99 an increase of $.52 The problem with that was when I got home each fogger in the box only covered 2,000 Cu/ft. for a real price increase of over 300%. Now it takes 9 foggers to do one pole barn that used to take 3. Raid has a pack of 4 at 5,000 Cu/ft per fogger for $7.00 Time to give the competition some $$.

[reasonfreedom]

Aug 3, 2012 10:32:07 GMT -5 @jma23 said:

I just used up the last of my "Hotshot" insect foggers from May of 2009 (I date the boxes). They cost $5.47 for a package of 4 (Walmart) and each fogger covers 6,000 Cu/ft. Last week I bought 3 more packs of 4 for $5.99 an increase of $.52 The problem with that was when I got home each fogger in the box only covered 2,000 Cu/ft. for a real price increase of over 300%. Now it takes 9 foggers to do one pole barn that used to take 3. Raid has a pack of 4 at 5,000 Cu/ft per fogger for $7.00 Time to give the competition some $$.

Yeah, they have been doing that with a lot of products. Same price smaller amount or increased price smaller amount. The reason wxyz doesn't see inflation is because he is looking at the CPI which doesn't include the real inflation areas. Housing is dragging down the CPI more than anything over the past 4 years.

[damnotagain]

Wxyz , I understand the difference between inflation and deflation . I ran across this article as well as the usual sources wiki . I believe the only deflation has been in real estate . After reading the following article do you feel that all the QE has been beneficial to anyone other than the banks and Wall Street?
Are we still in a deflationary economy?



A deflationist zombie (Bernanke or Krugman for example) never notices price rises because their cost of borrowing easy credit is near-zero. When prices go up -- they just borrow more at virtually no cost. Non-zombies experience these price rises because their cost of borrowing starts at 3 1/2 percent and goes right up to over 30 percent and in the case of payday loans annualizes at over 400 percent so they really feel these price rises. (Everybody's in debt, but if your interest cost is zero you don't notice it).

The entire political class and ruling Wall Street class are zero percent interest zombies who talk about 'deflation' in the value of their second, third and fourth homes. This is paper-deflation, zombie-deflation, and has nothing to do with the real economy. Recently, house prices in some spots in the U.S. and elsewhere have risen -- due to all the money created to satisfy the zombies -- causing a new bubble in real estate in Florida, Arizona and elsewhere. When this new real estate bubble pops, the zombies will whine that about 'deflation' again and the Central Banks will print again and these zombies will not 'feel' the price inflation of food, energy, education, transportation, insurance, etc. They've been inoculated against the effects of price inflation with endless free injections of free credit. Meanwhile, the arc of prices for non-zombies has continued to go straight up since the Lehman collapse. Killing the zombies means raising interest rates but no zombie is going vote to kill itself (the Fed will never raise rates, there is no 'exit strategy').

www.huffingtonpost.com/max-keiser/zombie-economics-explains-split_b_2420756.html

[decoy409]

damnotagain,

Wonderful entry



That speaks pretty loud. Has a smell of poor man covering the rich man. How do you smell that,#145 is a perfect example.

But better let wxyz give their answer as you asked.

[frankq]

So....what is the final concensus on this? Any final data? We should have enough info at this point.

[frankq]

So what's the deal? Are we coming to a conclusion here or do we just let the experiment hover in Limbo....

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

I think the conclusion looks something like this Mr. Q. 

[Virgil Showlion]

Not that anybody noticed, but the experiment data showed that there was considerable inflation in foodstuffs.

And also (dare I point out) that Ham's chart only goes to 2009, with the last data point from 2008 to 2009 showing a rise in the cost of food as a percentage of disposable income.

[Virgil Showlion]

Mar 18, 2013 10:53:10 GMT -5 @wxyz said:

The experiment showed nothing.  EXACTLY the point I made above.  An unscientific sample of people that are biased in favor of inflation such as Virgil, collect TOTALLY unscientific data, form a totally SMALL and statistically invalid sample and try to say that it supports the idea that we are seeing huge inflation.

This is exactly the danger, stupidity, and yes, power of the internet.  There are a lot of benefits of the internet, but there are also a lot of dangers as "stuff" like this takes on a surface sheen of validity when in fact it is completely invalid and false.

The data was simply meant as a closer-to-home supplement to the dozens of charts throughout the thread showing the 2010 YoY rise in the price of corn, wheat, beef, pork, soy, and any other number of food staples.

As real as inflation in food prices may or may not be, prices at my grocery store rose by 12% over 2010. Perhaps it was different everywhere else, but in Virgil's world prices went up, and they went up a lot. I told the grocers that the prices were supposed to be dropping because of a deflationary environment, but surprisingly they wouldn't accept that as payment for my 12% more expensive groceries. So a fat lot of good heeding the CPI did me.

In terms of investing, if you'd shorted food-based commodities in 2010, you'd have lost your shirt, your house, and sold your kidneys by now.

[texasredneck]

Virgil

It was not all bad if you had not lost the house you could not have paid the increase in costs of lights, water, gas or garbage collection anyway. So its all good.

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

Mar 18, 2013 10:40:48 GMT -5 @wxyz said:

EXACTLY MR A.  

YES, AS USUAL, THERE IS NO INFLATION.  The danger continues to be deflation as shown by the Fed policies and the situation in the EU.  The inflation hawks on here have been consistently and totally wrong with their emphasis on anecdotal "stuff" to support their fantasy that massive inflation is right around the corner.  They have been wrong for the past four years just as they have been wrong about investing in stocks and funds.

That is the fallacy of the internet.  Anyone can post anything they want, that does not make it REALITY.

  Exactly, and the funny thing is that if things fall apart like so many of them are saying that deflation will take hold and everything will drop.  Virgil you say that the chart only goes to 2009; what are you trying to claim, that since 2009 the price of food has started to take up close to 11% of total income?    Food could rise 100% from 2009 and the fact is that we are looking at the same rates as they were back in the 50's, income wise, this is during the so called golden era for the middle class according to some it would seem... 

[frankq]

Out my way, prices were commodity driven more so than by inflation. Coffee and sugar, oh..lets not forget the corn scare. But it seemed that it was at least the perception of a shortage in certain commodities that drove the bus. Some creative packaging was noticed too.

[Aman A.K.A. Ahamburger]

Exactly!  The price of food went up because of the price of commodities, not because of real inflation.  This is exactly what Mr. Z and myself have been saying this entire thread, the fact is that the threat of DEFLATION is what has been plaguing us this whole time.  The irony in this thread is of course that the higher commodity prices have helped farmers pull down records amount of money, aka a GOOD thing for the economy. 

[frankq]

Good point. We've had the discussion regarding the various causes of inflation before...

[sunrnr]

Jun 19, 2013 8:42:09 GMT -5 @wxyz said:

SO.........where is all that hyper-inflation that was supposed to be happening..............."never mind".

A good lesson here, anecdotal reports and thinking does not equal reality.  Kind of reminds me of Global Warming.  Human superstition and thinking is so interesting and often so delusional.

I think after the past five years it is now time to say....YES THERE IS NO INFLATION.

I believe we're still in a period of deflation. A bit of inflation would not be a bad thing. However the risk for continuing on into hyperinflation is a real possibility in the future.

[Virgil Showlion]

Jun 19, 2013 8:42:09 GMT -5 @wxyz said:

SO.........where is all that hyper-inflation that was supposed to be happening..............."never mind".

A good lesson here, anecdotal reports and thinking does not equal reality.  Kind of reminds me of Global Warming.  Human superstition and thinking is so interesting and often so delusional.

I think after the past five years it is now time to say....YES THERE IS NO INFLATION.

Prices went up over the duration of the experiment. We documented prices over a sample of 55 individuals.

This experiment was run two years ago, not five. Core inflation has been close to mean levels over the past two years, which you might have noticed isn't "NO INFLATION". Food inflation beat out core inflation, rising 2.4% and 3.8% over 2011 and 2012 respectively. Finally, the experiment made no predictions whatsoever about hyperinflation.

If I'd known you cared so much about a message board experiment, I'd have put a disclaimer in the OP.

Decoy is gone, man. He's got his own message board now. His predictions about inflation past, present, and future can't hurt you anymore.

[Deleted]

Where is Decoy's message board?

[Virgil Showlion]

Jun 19, 2013 9:13:55 GMT -5 ArchietheDragon said:

Where is Decoy's message board?

I don't know. I know he was complaining about NMSNM admin on the Proboards support board whilst creating it.

Type

decoy409 -site:notmsnmoney.proboards.com
into Google and it should give you all instances of decoy409 that don't appear on our message board. If you get a hit, it might be Decoy.

[Deleted]

Cool. Decoy is here if anyone is interested in following him

notsomsn4.forumotion.com/

[Virgil Showlion]

Jun 19, 2013 9:17:51 GMT -5 @wxyz said:

On the subject of delusional thinking.  Since March of 2009 the stock indexes are up 130-150%, depending on the index.

The inflationists were thinking that some of the trillions the Fed dumped into stocks might eventually make its way out into the greater world. It didn't, which is why stocks have shot sky high while the economy stagnates.

As for "lightening up", all I'm doing is pointing out the errors in your criticism. And challenging your characterization of the experiment as "delusional", unless you think we imagined the numbers we entered.

[frankq]

Jun 19, 2013 9:21:16 GMT -5 ArchietheDragon said:

Cool. Decoy is here if anyone is interested in following him

notsomsn4.forumotion.com/

Hey...someone should let him know that gold is down $70 this morning and looks to be falling below $1300.....

So much for Gold and Silver going higher

[sunrnr]

Jun 20, 2013 6:28:34 GMT -5 frankq said:

Jun 19, 2013 9:21:16 GMT -5 ArchietheDragon said:

Cool. Decoy is here if anyone is interested in following him

notsomsn4.forumotion.com/

Hey...someone should let him know that gold is down $70 this morning and looks to be falling below $1300.....

So much for Gold and Silver going higher

It appears you already took care of that. Only post on the site from someone other than the admin. 
It must get  lonely when the only one you have to play with is yourself ....