POW! BAM! Chanukah!

SiegelShuster

Don’t worry, I won’t let Chanukah pass without mention. Click here to listen to a 1-hour radio documentary, “Chanukah: A Time for Superheroes.” It explains how the comic book industry was created mostly by Jews. It features an instructor from the Pratt Institute, which is all the better.

Core Inflation

PPI.GIF

Wholesale prices surge

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer
Tue Dec 19, 9:15 AM ET

WASHINGTON – Inflation at the wholesale level surged by the largest amount in more than three decades in November, reflecting higher prices for gasoline and a host of other items.

The Producer Price Index, which measures inflation pressures before they reach the consumer, was up 2 percent last month, the biggest advance since a similar increase in November 1974, the Labor Department reported Tuesday.

Economists had been expecting a rebound in wholesale prices following two months of big declines. However, the 2 percent jump was four times bigger than the 0.5 percent increase they had forecast. Even excluding volatile energy and food prices, core inflation posted a 1.3 percent advance, the biggest jump in 26 years.

Wholesale prices have taken a huge jump, obviously due to oil and gas. I think it’s hilarious how the “core rate of inflation” doesn’t include energy and food. Thanks to cheap Chinese labor you can buy a DVD player for $30, but so what, if gas is over $3/gallon, with all of the money going to the biggest, most profitable corporations on Earth? I hate comparisons with gas prices in Europe, because the high gas taxes over there pay for projects that benefit society as a whole.

There’s no point in the Fed trying to adjust interest rates upwards, because all that will do is collapse whatever parts of the economy are still working. This is what happened in the 1970’s, and it resulted in the so-called stagflation, where high unemployment and high inflation defied the “law” of supply-and-demand.

One big difference between the 70’s and now is that the surge in demand for energy and cars, etc., isn’t from Baby Boomers coming of age, but from China. It would have helped if we hadn’t destabilized the Mideast by invading Iraq. Oops!

Dead-on Colbert

Well this sure is a coincidence, given my post of only a few hours ago about Bodyworld 2! You can forget all of the happy talk on that radio show I recorded.

Leave it to Stephen Colbert to force my hand about the controversy surrounding Bodyworld 2. Watch the video clip, then click here. If that link doesn’t work for you, try this one. Here it is, folks! The dark, ugly side of the business of turning human corpses into plastic museum pieces.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/Colbert/Colbert12-18-06.flv 400 300]
BTW, I know I haven’t posted much of Colbert lately. Partly because I was genuinely concerned about Comedy Central being on the warpath against its material being posted, but mostly because I haven’t been keeping up. Blogger fatigue, I guess!