Inflation, Lies and Buying the Dip: The Real and the Imaginary
I was at our local Safeway store earlier, buying a few groceries, and once again felt slightly alarmed by the fact that a very small bag of groceries ended up costing over $60.
It's not the first time I've noticed that there were a few items that I hadn't bought in a while that had had some very sharp price increases.
In particular, there's a kind of sausage we like to get for when we have a "cold cuts" dinner that used to be $2.69 a pound as recently as 12 to 18 months ago, and when I got some today it was $4.99 a pound.
That is a price increase — or "inflation" — that seems utterly and completely disconnected from any kind of official reporting on inflation. What's more, it is completely disconnected from even some of the "shadow figures" you can find online, as reported by organizations who don't use the government's filtered statistics.
I have reached a point where the lies about the financial state of affairs is more worrisome than the actual inflation. Heck, there's still food we can afford, and we grow a fair bit of our own, mostly from seeds we harvest from the previous year's garden.
So it's not about going hungry or anything that dramatic.
But it seems to me that "somebody" somewhere is working awfully hard to hide reality as much as possible. "Yes, everything is fine!" (even though the house is on fire).
Not entirely sure how "fine" everything is, anymore.
Another Market Tumble...
Meanwhile, the crypto markets took another dump, and the "Usual Suspects" are once again running around shouting "Buy the dip! Buy the dip!"
Dip???
This doesn't look like a "dip" to me. A "dip" suggests to me that there's reasonably strong evidence for an imminent uptrend. Absent that, "buying the dip" sounds more like "throwing good money after bad," to me.
And the punters who are out there talking about the bear market "coming to an end" must be high on Hopium.
Historically, there has been four years between high points.
Let's Review:
- BTC went from about $80 to near $1,000 in late 2013.
- BTC went from about $2,500 to near $20,000 in late 2017.
- BTC went from about $5,500 to near $65,000 in late 2021.
Unless I'm just really bad at math, I don't see anything much happening until the 2nd half of 2025. Which isn't to say we won't be having some false starts and stops along the way...
This is definitely not investment advice, but my guess would be that we'll have $18,000 to $40,000 BTC until mid-2025, and then we'll see a new top at around $200,000, maybe more.
I'm sure there are legions of TA experts who want to disagree and insist that the "nose hair oscillator is approaching a death cross with the 100-day moving average of the surface area of butterfly wings" suggests something else. Which is fine.
My point is that the shorter you make your observation period, the more likely you are to be proven wrong... which doesn't sit well in an industry with a very short attention span.
Meanwhile I fear it might not be too long before a box of corn flakes is suddenly $10. And the scares me!
Thanks for visiting, and have a great Sunday!
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Created at 2023-08-20 01:08 PDT
0924/2179
Oh boy. You’re making me nervous about my upcoming trip to the States. Inflation is pretty bad in Japan, too, but it sounds much worse for some reason in the US.
I have been alarmed at the food prices for a while. I still cannot understand how people don't even blink at the cost of their cartload.
I know of a single person with 4 children working (two of her kids are also working) and she was getting $100 in food stamps, which they just upped to $600. Crazy, right? I think they are trying to fix the wrong problem here.
Honestly, the inflation is everywhere. It is affecting so many people. The people in my country are always thinking that it is only happening in my country but the inflation is happening all over the world...
It is so sad especially for the fact that some people will become poorer
It irks me when people freak out about the ripple effects of money supply inflation and other economic factors driving prices up, but weren't paying attention during the credit expansion and money printing that started this ball rolling. It was a massive wealth transfer to people who could use these new means to buy real goods, and I suspect this played a role in the current real estate market mess with corporate fat cats running the new housing market. meanwhile, the ripple effects are hitting everything else, and it looks like folks who bought on credit will be coming up empty when the bills come due as priorities shift thanks to these higher prices.