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birb_cromble  4d ago (text post)   742 thread views

Qeekly Finance Thread - 2026-09-26

A weekly thread to discuss financial matters - from personal all the way up to global.

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I am seeing no collapse in rents unless you mean a collapse in the rate of increase of rents.

People have become absolutely untethered from reality on inflation. They'll say stupid shit "like, actually inflation is 10%" and point to eggs, gas, or whatever. Then when the price collapses they just ignore that.

Relatable. Actual conversation:

This specific peanut butter just doubled in price. Are we supposed to believe inflation is less than that?

Inflation is about a basket of goods over a period of tome. Why would you just look at a single price change for a single peanut butter?

crickets

Years pass.

That specific peanut butter just got 20% cheaper. I guess we are now having 20% deflation?

It's still not back to the original price so it doesn't count.

But you looked at a single instantaneous price change and concluded yearly inflation must be way more than 4%. Why can't we look at this single instantaneous price change and conclude that it must actually be way less than 3%?

Well we're still not back to the original price so inflation must still be way higher than 3%.

There's no reason to use peanut butter when there's a series that goes back millenia using a perfectly uniform unchanging product.

Gold is inflated at a rate of 17% over the last 5 years, and at a rate of 11% over the last 25 years. Or rather, the USD has been debased at those rates. The gold is the same as it has always been.

I still remember when we had 75% deflation from 1980-2000. What a time to be alive!

Gold is obviously such an important part of the economy. We use it for lots of things like Monster cable connectors, and tooth fillings, and chains for rappers. That's why it's the ONLY thing we need to calculate inflation.

And gold won't let you down. My car from 2026 that drives itself and doesn't need gas? Just trash compared to a 1980 Chevy Impala. Good old gold is always the same.

All those economists who measure inflation are just a bunch of silly-nillys. I can measure inflation every time I go down to the rare coin shop.

Sometimes, after too much wine, I like to think about how in 30 years Elon will go out to the asteroid belt and bring down 10 quadrillion dollars worth of gold. Imagine the deflation! We'd all be so rich.

You can abuse the start of time series all you like, it won't change my point.

The fact that the start of time series can be abused shows you that gold is not a good proxy for money.

Interesting. I'm seeing a drop from $4310 to $4135 over the weekend. I guess we had 4% deflation in three days and I didn't even notice!

It takes time for inflation to work its way through the economy, and prices are sticky. Both are econ 101 quiz points when it comes to inflation.

it takes time for inflation to work its way through the economy, and prices are sticky.

Difficult to square your worldview with sharp swings in the price of gold. The gold is always the same, so when the value of gold changes it's an indicator of the value of the dollar changing. If it takes time for inflation to "work its way through the economy", why does the price of gold change so rapidly with inflation?

Or perhaps it's the case that not every change in the price of gold is due to inflation?

That gold outperforms cooked KPI numbers over the long term does not mean that all of the limitations of measuring inflation in the first place suddenly go away.

So short term price changes in gold don't mean anything, but long term ones do.

Long term changes like 1980-2000 perhaps?

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