Draining national prosperity

Quite a tour-de-force by Hutchinson, including a grim roadmap of the likely near future over the next year. He is too kind on the statistical artists at the Fed and BLS, but does have an interesting new find:

Indeed, it may already be showing up there; the seasonally unadjusted consumer price index for March was up 0.9% (an annual rate of around 11%) and only a heroic seasonal adjustment of 0.6%, double the next-largest seasonal adjustment for any month in the last 10 years, brought the figure down to an acceptable 0.3%.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics explains on its website that its seasonal adjustment methodology changed in January; should it be the case that this is being used to suppress consumer price inflation, even the dozier members of the media will come to notice after another couple of months have passed. In any case, it is likely that by the latter part of 2008, consumer price inflation in the US will be running at more than 10% and that even the heroic mavens at the BLS will be unable to suppress that information completely (though on past form they will undoubtedly try.)