dailyreckoning.com.au / By Bill Bonner / February 8th, 2013
Who are the bigger liars? Argentinian feds? Or American feds?
News Flash from the pampas:
Argentina freezes prices to break inflation spiral
‘Argentina announced a two-month price freeze on supermarket products Monday in an effort to break spiraling inflation.
‘The price freeze applies to every product in all of the nation’s largest supermarkets – a group including Walmart, Carrefour, Coto, Jumbo, Disco and other large chains. The companies’ trade group, representing 70 percent of the Argentine market, reached the accord with Commerce Secretary Guillermo Moreno, the government’s news agency Telam reported.’
The Argentinian government moved to stop the price increases it previously denied were happening. It said inflation was only 10%. Turns out, it’s more like 30%.
But our focus today is not on the land of the gauchos…it’s on the land of honchos, HoJos and bozos…that is the land north of the Rio Grande.
Before we come to it, though, another glance south of the Rio de la Plata:
‘The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has issued Argentina with a ‘declaration of censure’ for providing inaccurate inflation and GDP data and has given it until September 29th to amend the problems or will impose sanctions.
‘The IMF Friday called on Argentina to fix its statistics “without further delay”.
‘The IMF said it would review Argentina’s progress in November and warned that if the problems are not sorted then it could impose sanctions on the country. This would bar one of South America’s biggest economies from voting on IMF policies and accessing financing.’
When will the IMF look at America’s inflation figures?
We never paid much attention to the claims that our own feds were intentionally falsifying the numbers. Too many earnest quants and honest statisticians at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Many of them Republicans. A few Tea-Partiers, even. Too many different points of view to pull off a real conspiracy.
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