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Today, it's hard to know what to believe. On one hand the
government has been trying to tell us for years that there isn't
any inflation but on the other hand, the costs of goods and
services just seem to be continually rising. Then the Chairman
of the Federal Reserve Board announces once again that to combat
the imminent rise in inflation, the Fed will raise the interest
rates once again. Dumb country boy that I might be, it seems to
me that raising the prime interest rates will cause the price of
housing loans to rise. If the cost of obtaining housing loans
and other loans (such as new car loans, credit card interest,
etc.) increases, then that will cause the cost of housing and
other goods and services to go up. Isn't that INFLATION?
I am aware the Federal Reserve Board has the best interest of the
American public at heart (or, at the very least, they are
supposed to), but give me a break! For the past several years
I've seen prices rise on everything from drugs from the
pharmacy... to gas for my car (talk about a price hike!)... to
toilet paperÉwell, you get the idea. Even the candy bars are
going up. It seems that anything we buy these days contain less
for more. The cost of all goods and services seem to be rising.
I am personally not opposed to the recent rise in the minimum
wage. Many deserving people will now earn money they seem to
need desperately, but any logical person can see that an increase
in the cost of goods and services will result at some point along
the line in an increase in the cost of these goods and services.
Even for well deserving reasons, it seems that prices will
continue to rise.
What I haven't seen rise proportionally is my pension check even
though it has a so-called Cost-of-Living adjustment. In other
words, if the prices of goods and services are going up and the
income remains more or less stable, then in my mind that's
inflation. But the government experts and so-called economic
pundits say we don't have inflation.
If we have killed inflation, then those nagging doubts I have
been feeling must mean that we have a new phenomenon that I will
call Òghost' inflation. To fight this Òghost' inflation, we have
to wage war. In any war, the military leaders use defined
strategies to plan and conduct hostilities. To fight the
inflation that doesn't exist, we, as the generals of our own
destinies, have to develop cost-avoidance strategies to fight the
good fight to keep some of our hard-earned money for ourselves.
After all, if the Fed can "combat inflation", then we can
certainly do the same.
By using these cost-avoidance strategies, we can free up money
that would be used to spend for these items. Thus, we create
"free money". There are many areas in our lives where we can
devise and implement these ideas.
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