{"id":3125,"date":"2009-05-18T20:58:29","date_gmt":"2009-05-19T01:58:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=3125"},"modified":"2010-01-04T08:20:07","modified_gmt":"2010-01-04T13:20:07","slug":"bullet-being-dodged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2009\/05\/18\/bullet-being-dodged\/","title":{"rendered":"bullet being dodged&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" vspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/images\/cpi_april09.gif\" \/><\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\">This is the graph of the <strong>Consumer Price Index<\/strong> for all of 2008 through 2009 to date. It is a picture of a bullet being dodged. While it&#8217;s not the index we follow to see if the Recession is lessening, it is the index we follow to make sure we&#8217;re not flying off of a cliff. The poison in a Recession is the <strong>Deflationary Spiral<\/strong>. It&#8217;s the situation where people panic and drop prices dramatically. Paradoxically, our money suddenly is worth more than it used to be. Unfortunately, the deflation becomes self perpetuating. A slow inflation which we find annoying turns out to be a good thing after all. Here it is again from the Great Depression:<\/div>\n<div align=\"center\">&nbsp;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"282\" vspace=\"5\" height=\"203\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/images\/cpi-20s.gif\" \/><\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\">Looking at the top graph, we flirted with a deflationary spiral in the 3<sup>rd<\/sup> and 4<sup>th<\/sup> quarters last year, but we seem to be back on track. It doesn&#8217;t tell us about recovery, it only tells us that the black hole of a Depression is averted for the moment. There&#8217;s another grim reminder on the lower graph. Note the dip and levelling in 1937. That&#8217;s when F.D.R. let up on his New Deal prematurely in response to his critics, and prolonged our misery until WWII. It&#8217;s more apparent on the unemployment graph:<\/div>\n<div align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"356\" vspace=\"5\" height=\"297\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/images\/TGD.gif\" \/>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\">Recovery is fragile&#8230;  <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is the graph of the Consumer Price Index for all of 2008 through 2009 to date. It is a picture of a bullet being dodged. While it&#8217;s not the index we follow to see if the Recession is lessening, it is the index we follow to make sure we&#8217;re not flying off of a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}