Have we had enough inflation to get rid of the penny?

by philg

How are folks feeling after today’s inflation report? The Wall Street Journal:

Core prices, a measure of underlying inflation that excludes volatile energy and food categories, increased 5.6% in March from a year earlier, accelerating slightly from 5.5% the prior month. Core inflation, which economists see as a better predictor of future inflation, has stayed stubbornly high in part because of inflationary pressures from shelter costs.

(The journalists don’t speculate on what might be causing shelter costs to rise. It couldn’t be a shift in the demand curve from 175 million post-1965 immigrants and their descendants (half of these folks are already in the U.S. housing market and the other half are forecast to arrive soon), could it?)

The month-to-month chart shows reasonably stable core price inflation of close to 0.5 percent per month.

We, via Congress and the Fed, can’t resist trying to cheat our way to economic prosperity. The deficit spending and quantitative easing aren’t going to stop, in other words, and therefore the steady erosion of the dollar’s purchasing power won’t stop. But maybe we can adapt in a small way….

As the price of a crummy apartment trends toward $2000/month, can we let go of the pennies that litter our floors and clog our vacuum cleaners? The BLS CPI calculator goes back only to 1913, but it shows that the economy functioned just fine back then with the smallest coin being worth more than today’s quarter:

Given that most transactions are via credit card anyway and that we expect continued Bidenflation, why not declare that the smallest coin going forward will be the quarter? While we’re at it, we can decree that all quarters must be from the American Women Quarters Program, e.g.,

The next step up from quarters would be a $1 coin with a picture of (cloth-masked) Dr. Fauci on one side and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla holding a positive COVID-19 test result.

Today’s $5 bill is worth less than a quarter was in 1913 so we’d get rid of it in favor of a $5 coin showing the legitimate government’s victory over the January 6 insurrection (Jacob Angeli, the QAnon shaman; obverse) and Joe Biden’s victory over Corn Pop (reverse).

Paper money would start with the $10 bill, which is worth a little more than the 1913 quarter.

Any better ideas for streamlining the use of cash?

Inflation anecdote: Chewy shipped Mindy the Crippler’s food recently. It was $2.97 per pound in September 2019. The same brand/variety food is $5.13/lb. today. That’s 73 percent inflation over a 42-month period…. roughly 17 percent compounded annual inflation. We are informed by the BLS that the price should have gone up to $3.48/lb. I.e., the government says that inflation is 17 percent and Chewy says it is 73 percent.

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Steakflation: $60 per pound at Costco

by philg

From the Palm Beach Gardens, Florida Costco today:

(Never buy a steak that costs less than your grill!)

What if you’re on a budget and/or fleeing the Egyptians (who never enslaved any Jews, according to academics)?

As an experiment, I bought a $75 Wagyu steak and grilled it according to the instructions of a Costco member who was confidently buying some. He said “hot grill 1-2 minutes per side”. I chose a full 2 minutes per side, plus perhaps 1 minute extra in the middle of the grill because the thermometer showed only 115 degrees internal temp. It probably could have done without that last minute. Due to the high fat content, there was an immediate grill fire, which is probably why the Japanese sear this in a hot skillet.

Family verdict: Superb. It turns out that even real Japanese A5 Wagyu like this is not ruinously expensive because people are satisfied with a third of a pound.

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Make an appointment to see the doctor to get your opioids

by philg

April 5 email from Mass General, below. Customers are reminded that coronapanic officially ends next month and that, to keep the OxyContin flowing, it will be necessary to actually see a physician before taxpayers will pay for the pills. (i.e., for more than three years you’ve been able to get Oxy the same way that Californians with a sniffle get their Paxlovid: an audio or video call from the comfort of your sofa). Given that it takes a month or more to get in and see a physician in the U.S. (the miracle of open borders for the low-skilled and closed borders and onerous re-licensing requirements for qualified European physicians), I’m providing this reminder as a public service.

Related:

  • Focusing on race and racism just makes the problem worse. (true or false?) (there is one answer that will enable a person to continue receiving a paycheck from Mass General Brigham)
  • Should you wear a mask when going to the doc to get your opioid prescription? “Were masks in hospitals a waste of time? Hated NHS policy made ‘no difference’ to Covid infection rates, study finds” (Daily Mail, April 7): Researchers from St George’s Hospital in south-west London analysed routinely collected infection control data over a 40-week period between December 4, 2021 and September 10, 2022. … Researchers found removing the mask policy in phase two did not produce a ‘statistically significant change’ in the hospital-acquired Covid infection rate. Equally, they ‘did not observe a delayed effect’ in the Covid infection rate once the policy was removed. … Lead author Dr Ben Patterson said: ‘Our study found no evidence that mandatory masking of staff impacts the rate of hospital SARS-CoV-2 infection with the Omicron variant. … Fellow researcher Dr Aodhan Breathnach added: ‘Many hospitals have retained masking at significant financial and environment cost and despite the substantial barrier to communication.
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Ukrainian wives discovering the superiority of being married to the German taxpayer

by philg

Western Ukraine is safe enough for elderly Americans to visit (example). Friends of friends go about their daily work there without any thoughts of becoming a war casualty. One guy, however, misses his wife and kids (elementary school age). They fled to Germany during the early days of the war, taking 100 percent of the family savings with them. Now the wife is established in the German welfare system, getting per-child payments, and has discovered how much more pleasant life can be without a husband in the house (does Germany have Tinder?). The father has sought to recover the children at least, but a German court agreed with the wife that Ukraine is not safe enough for anyone to live in (though the Ukrainian mom and teenage son whom I wrote about in April 2022 moved back long ago).

In the pre-globalized pre-welfare-state world, a live husband with a good income would become more valuable in the event of a war that killed a lot of working-age men. But in our current world, the husband, despite being a high-status professional in Ukraine, became surplus when he couldn’t compete with the German government (and German Tinder?).

Context from the BBC:

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Argentina investor looks at another government that can’t resist spending beyond its means

by philg

A recent Wall Street Journal interview with a guy who made $billions in Argentine bonds… “Paul Singer, the Man Who Saw the Economic Crises Coming”. First, let’s check his track record as a prophet:

“Men and nations behave wisely,” the Israeli statesman Abba Eban observed, “when they have exhausted all other resources.”

In an interview for these pages in 2011, he warned about the broad discretion the then-new Dodd-Frank law gave government officials to deal with what they deem systemic risks. The “atmosphere of unpredictability” doesn’t “make the system any safer,” he said. “This is nuts to be identifying systemically important institutions.”

A dozen years later, he still thinks it’s nuts: “As we’ve seen with SVB and Signature, virtually any institution can be deemed systemically important overnight and seized, with the government then completely empowered to determine what happens to various classes of creditors.”

The result is to destroy market discipline and encourage bankers to behave recklessly. He recounts a conversation on the trading desk at his firm following the recent weekend of bank bailouts. “If they hadn’t guaranteed all the deposits,” a colleague said, “things would’ve gotten very ugly in the markets on Monday.”

Mr. Singer replied: “That is entirely true. Things would’ve been ugly. But is that what regulation is supposed to be? Wrapping all market movements in security blankets?”

What about the most significant economic phenomenon of the moment?

Mr. Singer saw inflation coming at the start of the Covid pandemic. “We think it is very unlikely that central bankers will move to normalize monetary policy after the current emergency is over,” he wrote in an April 2020 letter to investors. “They did not normalize last time”—meaning after the 2008 crisis—“and the world has moved demonstrably closer to a tipping point after which money printing, prices and the growth of debt are in an upward spiral that the monetary authorities realize cannot be broken except at the cost of a deep recession and credit collapse.”

Mindful of the history of the 1970s, when inflation retreated several times only to come roaring back, Mr. Singer figures short-term declines will convince policy makers that they’ve slain the beast. They’ll “probably go back to their playbook,” resuming the policy of easy money.

The guy’s remedy is one that will never fly with the American voter:

How do we chart a course back toward sound money and long-term prosperity? “The optimistic scenario,” Mr. Singer replies, “would entail pro-growth reforms across the board, including tax reductions, entitlement reforms, regulatory streamlining, encouraging energy development including hydrocarbons . . . cutting federal spending, selling the asset holdings on central bank balance sheets.”

(see quote from Abba Eban, above)

Let’s assume that Congress and the Fed are never going to change. How does an individual investor protect him/her/zir/theirself from the doom that Singer predicts? That’s where it gets tough! The guy is bearish on nearly all assets, especially crypto. His $55 billion Elliott Management fund can do things that none of us can do, e.g., buy a big stake in Salesforce and get the company to fire 10 percent of its employees to boost profits (and therefore stock value).

A friend who has done some co-investing with Paul Singer’s fund points out that “talk is cheap” and he won’t accept Singer as a prophet without evidence that he made huge money in inflation swaps after that April 2020 newsletter to his clients. Wikipedia points out that Singer was predicting doom in 2014:

In short, if this smart and experienced fund manager is right, U.S. and European assets will be eroded by inflation for the next few years and returns to investors will be minimal.

In a November 2014 investment letter, Elliott described optimism about U.S. growth as unwarranted. “Nobody can predict how long governments can get away with fake growth, fake money, fake jobs, fake financial stability, fake inflation numbers and fake income growth,” Elliott wrote. “When confidence is lost, that loss can be severe, sudden and simultaneous across a number of markets and sectors.”

Anyone who acted on that advice would have done quite poorly until 2022!

Maybe the take-away should be that Americans today aren’t smarter than Americans were in the 1960s and 1970s. Inflation jumped dramatically in 1966 as Lyndon Johnson and Congress spent like alimony plaintiffs on (1) the Great Society programs of Medicare, Medicaid, etc., and (2) the Vietnam War. The inflation rate did not come down to the pre-1966 level until 1998. Maybe we could argue that inflation was finally whipped by 1992 (chart):

If we’re expecting at least 26 years of elevated inflation, what do we do? For a person who doesn’t already have a house, one reasonable response is for him/her/zir/them to try to get a 100 percent mortgage at today’s 6.5-7 percent 30-year rates. Put some stocks in as collateral as necessary to hit the 100 percent number. If Paul Singer is right that the D.C. technocrats won’t be able to resist inflation-as-usual policies, inflation will render the real cost of borrowing almost $0. If Paul Singer is wrong, there is no prepayment penalty so just refinance if rates fall dramatically.

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Inflation chronicles: car insurance going up 30 percent

by philg

We have two cars. They’re older than they were a year ago and presumably less valuable. We have had no tickets, accidents, or claims. Progressive is bumping the rate by 30 percent. I talked to a friend in Austin, Texas. His rate is also going up 30 percent.

Readers: What are you seeing for car insurance rate increases? What’s the explanation for this in what we are informed is a market economy? Most of the premium is for collision, right? Have body shop rates gone up 30 percent now that Americans realize it is more pleasant to relax on the sofa than to work in a body shop?

Separately, the news is not all bad. When one goes to the Progressive web site, the first and most prominent link is to learn about the company’s “commitment to diversity and inclusion” (not their actual diversity and inclusion, but their commitment to the religion).

What if we follow the link?

For years, we’ve been saying there’s a very real and important business case for DEI. It’s been proven time and time again that a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive organization drives profit and productivity by creating brands, products, and services that are more relevant and desirable in our competitive and multicultural marketplace.

It was almost impossible for a DEI champion such as Silicon Valley Bank to fail, in other words.

How about over at State Farm? Instead of being at the very top of the homepage, Diversity & Inclusion is relegated to the footer, under Careers:

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No, Polygamy Isn’t the Next Gay Marriage (2015)

by philg

An expert analysis from 2015… “No, Polygamy Isn’t the Next Gay Marriage” (Politico):

I am a gay marriage advocate. So why do I spend so much of my time arguing about polygamy? Opposing the legalization of plural marriage should not be my burden, because gay marriage and polygamy are opposites, not equivalents. By allowing high-status men to hoard wives at the expense of lower-status men, polygamy withdraws the opportunity to marry from people who now have it; same-sex marriage, by contrast, extends the opportunity to marry to people who now lack it. One of these things, as they say on Sesame Street, is not like the other.

Yet this non sequitur just won’t go away: “Once we stop limiting marriage to male-plus-female, we’ll have to stop limiting it at all! Why only two? Why not three or four? Why not marriage to your brother? Or your dog? Or a toaster?” If there’s a bloody shirt to wave in the gay-marriage debate, this is it.

The shortest answer is in some ways the best: Please stop changing the subject! … If I sound exasperated, it’s because the polygamy argument doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Certainly it was absurd in 2015 for anyone to suggest that normalizing 2SLGBTQQIA+ couples would somehow lead to the normalization of larger groups of sex partners. Let’s check in with the nominally conservative Wall Street Journal, January 9, 2023… “How Instagram’s Favorite Therapist Makes Her Throuple Relationship Work”:

Dr. LePera, 40, a psychologist and bestselling self-help author who explores trauma and recovery issues with her 6 million Instagram followers, announced in 2021 that she and her wife had entered a romantic relationship with a third woman. … The therapist, who lives with her partners in Scottsdale, Ariz. …

Part of the gift of having two partners is allowing each partner to be themselves, not feeling like I need to force them into a box to fit this idea of a partner. I can express different parts of myself in each relationship. If we all allow each person to be as they are, to self-express in their unique ways, we can really expand ourselves.

We have a humongous bed. There are one or two companies that manufacture large-type beds. It’s almost like a double king. It’s very obnoxious.

Related:

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Inflation chronicles: 11 percent inflation from ADT for doing nothing

by philg

The question for today is whether we’re in a wage-price spiral. If everyone’s monthly bills are being bumped 5-15% annually because of the inflation that happened over the past year, shouldn’t we expect continued inflation because workers will need salary bumps of 5-15% and then the monthly fees will go up 5-15% in 2024?

Anecdote: When we moved in a year ago, ADT bamboozled me into signing up for a three-year monitoring contract for the alarm system that was already installed in the house. Apparently buried in the fine print is a clause that allows them to raise the rate as much as they want. It is going up 11 percent. Here’s the email:

For the percentage calculation:

ADT did not get the memo from Joe Biden, Janet Yellen, and Jerome Powell that inflation has been whipped?

On the bright side, our lawn care monthly fee recently was bumped up by only 5 percent. The letter from the owner explains that his break-even rate is $30 per hour per person. Where are the low labor costs for laptop class members that open borders was supposed to deliver? (Harvard study)

Readers: Are we in a fully-established wage-price spiral?

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Is the government lying to us about gas stoves?

by philg

From the Environmental Protection Agency:

We have an Italian natural gas range of doubtful quality. It is 15 years old. I am willing to bet that it has not been adjusted at any time in the past 5 years and, very likely, not at any time since its 2008 installation. I spent $200 on a low-level CO meter with 0.1 ppm resolution (not for this project, but to verify proper sealing of the piston-powered airplane’s heater). The meter arrives pre-calibrated at least at the 5 ppm level, which is supposedly the minimum we can expect near our health-destroying kitchen appliance, and says it has a range of 0-100 ppm.

What did it read parked right next to the range with two burners going? 0.0 ppm. Maybe it was broken. I walked around to various other parts of the house and got readings between 0.1 and 0.3 ppm. I went to the garage and started a car without opening the door. Within about 10 seconds the meter began to register 5 ppm then the alarm went off at 10 ppm (a home CO detector will trigger quickly at 400 ppm; see below from Kidde).

The garage air hit about 50 ppm in less than 60 seconds of running the car without the door open and the meter then showed a gradual downward trend after the was shut off and the door opened.

The EPA says that we should have expected a best case of 5-15 ppm in our kitchen, where two burners of the stove had been in use for an hour or so. We were reading 0.

Readers with CO meters: can you please test your house? How can we account for the discrepancy between what Science (the EPA) says and what a humble engineer measures?

Note: I would support a tax on non-induction ranges, both electric and gas, to fund hospital burn units and if I were building a house I would choose induction rather than a showy faux-commercial gas range. [Update: After the reader comment below regarding pacemakers and insulin pumps, I might have to reconsider my love for induction (or wear foil-lined garments once I reach pacemaker age?). It would be a horrible shame to have to convert from induction back to an old-school electric cooktop. On the the third hand, https://acadiacenter.org/hot-topic-dispelling-the-myths-about-induction-stoves/ says “There has never been a recorded instance of pacemaker interference with induction cooktops.” Maybe this is superstition like booster seats for 5-year-olds!]

Related:

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Will Brandon Johnson be Florida Realtor of the Year 2023?

by philg

It is impossible to walk a dog anywhere in Florida without running into neighbors who work in the real estate industry. Progressive victories yesterday in Chicago and Wisconsin were being celebrated down here. High hopes in particular are pinned on Brandon Johnson to take the title of Florida Realtor of the Year previously held by Andrew Cuomo.

The Democrat-governed state of Wisconsin isn’t as wealthy as Chicago, but it was a positive sign that a person whom the New York Times calls a “liberal judge” won by 55:45 (see “Liberal Wins Wisconsin Court Race, in Victory for Abortion Rights Backers”). (Separately, it is interesting that laws and the state constitution will have 180-degree different interpretations depending on the personal politics of the judge!)

The more extreme the politics in the states that send wealthy homebuyers to Florida, the better. If state and local governments are expanded in Illinois and Wisconsin and someone with money doesn’t agree with the new goals, that’s a big nudge toward moving. Chicago is home to nearly 200,000 millionaires (was 160,000 in 2022, but inflation should have lifted quite a few more folks into this category). If Brandon’s proposed new taxes motivate just ten percent of them to move to Florida, that’s 20,000 at least moderately nice homes that can be sold.

What’s the scale of real estate development in Florida? A whole new town, essentially, is being built on what was scrub land 30 minutes south of us: Avenir (houses from $700,000 to “over $3 million”); a similar idea is going on 30-miles inland from Fort Myers at Babcock Ranch.

As noted in yesterday’s post, in our neighborhood, the real estate bubble party ended with the interest rate boosts of summer 2022. Everything sat on the market for months maybe because nobody could figure out what houses were worth in the new non-zero-interest-rate environment. But just within the past month or so the market seems to be clearing. People agree that houses are worth, in nominal and continuously eroding dollars, between 80 and 100 percent of the peak 2022 numbers (i.e., everything has at least gone down a little via inflation).

Let’s hope that Brandon can follow through on his promise to make Chicago’s wealthy pay their fair share! He’s got at least $750 million in tax increases planned; the same article notes “34% of Chicagoans would leave the city if given the opportunity” and also highlights his work with teachers:

Johnson is a Cook County Board commissioner and earned over $390,ooo in five years as the Chicago Teachers Union legislative coordinator. He helped organize three teachers strikes in the city and has pushed the Red for Ed agenda intended to spread the Socialist doctrine among teachers.

He has received nearly $3.2 million in contributions from CTU and its affiliates, and the CTU just voted to take $8 per month from each member’s dues to back Johnson.

From a Florida perspective, the big dream would be a school closure or mask order from the new mayor. Here’s a February 2022 article about continued forced masking in Chicago schools:

Maybe it’s a good time to thank Lori Lightfoot for everything that she did for Florida?

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