Yesterday, I outlined a terrible secret.
That secret?
That the Fed knows the official inflation measure, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is practically useless for forecasting future inflation.
In a little-known paper published in 2001, the Fed found that food inflation, NOT CPI or PCE, is the best predictor of future inflation. Fed researchers wrote the following:
We see that past inflation in food prices has been a better forecaster of future inflation than has the popular core measure [CPI and PCE]…Comparing the past year’s inflation in food prices to the prices of other components that comprise the PCEPI (as in Table 1), we find that the food component still ranks the best among them all…
Source: St Louis Fed (emphasis added).
I want you to focus on these two admissions:
- The Fed has admitted that its official inflation measures do not accurately predict future inflation.
- The Fed admitted that FOOD prices are a much better predictor of future inflation. In fact, food prices were a better predictor of inflation than the Fed’s PCE, non-durables goods, transportation services, housing, clothing, energy and more.
I mention all of this because today food inflation is erupting higher.
We already noted that agricultural commodities are ripping higher.
But the situation is even worse than I imagined. The below quote is truly horrifying…
Adjusted for inflation and annualized, [food] costs are already higher now than for almost anytime in the past six decades, according FAO data. Indeed, it’s now harder to afford food than it was during the 2011 protests in the Middle East that led to the overthrow of leaders in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, said Alastair Smith, senior teaching fellow in global sustainable development at Warwick University in the U.K.
Source: Yahoo! Finance
Put simply, food inflation today than at almost any time in the last 60 years. That would include the 1970s, when inflation went into the double digits and the stock market crashed over 50% in a matter of months.
If you think we’re immune to something like this now, take a look at the below chart. This is a massive bubble, looking for a pin. And by the look of things, inflation is it!
On that note, we published a Special Investment Report concerning FIVE secret investments you can use to make inflation pay you as it rips through the financial system in the months ahead.
The report is titled Survive the Inflationary Storm. And it explains in very simply terms how to make inflation PAY YOU.
We made 100 copies available to the public.
Today is the last day this report is available to the general public.
To pick up yours, swing by:
phoenixcapitalmarketing.com/inflationstorm.html
Best Regards
