Gyroscopic Investing

"I only want reports issued that make me look good. Anything that bruises my snowflake ego will be suppressed."

You now really have to wonder whether TIPS capital adjustments, IRS bracket and standard deduction adjustments, and Social Security benefit adjustments are going to be made based on Junk CPI measurements.

Even if you don't own TIPS, and you're too young for SocSec, you really should care, because not adjusting IRS brackets and deductibles upward with inflation amounts to a stealth tax increase year after year.

I own a lot of STIP... a TIPS ETF with 3-5 year dated TIPS, and it has been beating it's non-TIPS cousin which is SHY, but... I'm going to have to watch it like a hawk from now on.

FYI, the STIP total return over the past year is 6.30% ! It really has been a great safe-haven.

Trust the ScienceTM

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A091RC1Q027SBEA

Rates are going to zero, but who will be given loans at zero besides government. Er, Orangeman personally.

Someone needs to shake up the BLS. The monthly job reports have been absolute garbage for 18+ months. A total waste of time to even look at them, with the revisions far exceeding the base numbers to begin with. I review them every month, and have continued to get frustrated.

As I have said in other posts, I have major trust issues with CPI as well as they are always playing with the components that make it up, and when you look at things like housing over decades, the increases have not matched CPI. One of the reasons i'm not a huge fan of TIPS, as you have to trust the government to report this stuff properly when they are financially incented not to do so.

I don't think they are making up numbers for political reasons like Trump stated, I just think it is classic government incompetence and apathy to solve any problems. If I Ied the BLS last year and had to revise down 1M jobs for the previous 12 months like they did last year, or made these huge revisions for the prior 2 months in last week's report, I might have thought to look into the problem instead of letting it continue.