No, it is economics where truth is the first casualty

Here's a good place to expose the fairy tale tellers  such as Janet Yellin, Barack Obama, and most every politician and professional economist in thrall to government in one way or another.

It is a daily Wall Street Journal feature reporting cash prices for about every basic item that folks buy and sell.  They are not futures, not speculation about what a thing might be worth next month; they are cash-on-the-barrel-head wholesale prices representing actual sales, actual deliveries in return for a handful of Federal Reserve Cartoons.


Edible tallow was 39 cents a pound yesterday, nice white grease the same. Gold bullion at $1324.60 per troy ounce. A nice young chicken carcass,  ready for  your broiler,  was $1.114 a pound.

And to get to life's basic necessities, lead solder traded hands at $1.31 a pound.  (Which, for you non-reloaders,  is about 7000 grains or roughly 35 200-grain semi-wadcutters for your 1911A1.)

This isn't pure lead. It is some sort of solder alloy, but that is beside the point because it is decidedly leadish and we're interested only in comparing real prices with government fairy tales, the chief of which are its "tame" inflation nonsense and Fed promises that it will continue to regulate its printing presses to max out inflation at 2 per cent.

Back to the WSJ chart. That lead sold one year ago yesterday for $1.22 a pound. Subtract and divide and discover that lead is up 7 per cent in 12 months.

I'm cherry picking only slightly. Grains are down substantially, for instance, but that probably reflects the decline of the ethanol-thug subsidies more than any real market force.

The chicken? Up about 6 per cent. Butter up 56 per cent. And let's not depress ourselves with pork and beef. If you're looking for stability and "affordability," I can recommend only the tallow and grease which are actually a penny or two cheaper over the year. And burlap, down from about 41 cents a yard to 39.  Chow down. Get yourself a nice new wardrobe.

Ma Joad, in the box car East of Eden where survival was measured in the ounces of fried dough still possible:  We got enough grease for two more days.

Two per cent inflation?  It is Grimm, a yarn with  all the credibility and integrity of  Bush II in 2003, under the Abe Lincoln banner, about Iraq's glorious future as the Peoria of the Middle East: "Mission Accomplished."