Marketneutral said:
COLA increase 4.1%
Government I Bonds 6.73%
Both of these use exactly the same measur of inflation, CPI-U. I-bonds include an additional fixed rate and are done on a 6 month basis.
We know that the govt massages the economic data so they can pay less interest.
Here's that vast government conspiracy theory again. You may know this. But in all the research I was able to do, I couldn't find any indication that this is true. I believe that people who believe this should go to the BLS web site and spend a few hours looking at their papers, reports and data. The web site is poorly organized and difficult to negotiate, but the information is good.
I believe inflation is double digits now but food, energy and housing do not count. And when housing counts it is based on being a renter. No property tax and less insurance.
Well, most of this is simply not true. While it is true that CPI considers a blend of renter and owner housing costs, that seems pretty reasonable since the Average American is a blend of owners and renters. The BLS spends a lot of time and energy trying to define the average person. They explain their methodology in reports and papers. They write explicitly what their breakdown of various baskets of goods is and go into gory detail on how each item is selected. They tell you where they go to price those items and if you haven't looked at this information, let me tell you -- it would be pretty hard to skew that data. The people who do all of this are civil servants, not administration lackeys.
People can believe the vast CPI government conspiracy if they want, but I have not seen the data to support this opinion.
Every once in a while, someone on this board posts their own personal inflation number and claims it is much higher than CPI. Of course if CPI were exactly accurate, we would expect about half of us would experience personal inflation rates that are higher than CPI. But I always ask the question, "How do you compute your personal inflation rate?" Unless you buy exactly the same thing every year, how can you possibly do that? I haven't heard a good answer yet.
In the two days since you joined us you have contributed 60 posts. Why don't you take some time and tell us a bit about yourself? I find it much easier to tell where someone is coming from and much easier to evaluate what someone says when I know a bit about them.
