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Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

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Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#201
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's a problem that there are co-dependencies with Russia. Yes, it's a grave mistake that Europe didn't untangle from those right after 2014. But not untangling them now would be completely brain-dead. I mean... Russia is now a rogue state carrying out scorched earth tactics, officially rewarding units guilty of war crimes (killing of civilians, rape), threatening the world with nuclear weapons, hijacking planes…

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Nope, I can not, actually. This just doesn't correspond to reality. Name one city that has suffered the fate of Mariupol from US actions. Even NATO bombardment of Serbian cities doesn't come even close to the level of destruction that the Russians are inflicting indiscriminately.

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#202
post #140
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I look at the Swedish numbers I feel the same and then I see that prices went down for "photography, audiovisual and computer equipment" and... Nothing else. Fuel is up 40+%, food by 8-10%, housing by 2%, electricity by 30+%. How the fuck do we end up with a normalised rate of inflation of 6-7%?? I do need to do proper research on the models because just using my common sense it doesn't make any fucking sense...

Because the inflation indicator is calculated with a typical spending basket, it has several components which are slower to adjust prices. In CPI for example housing is 25% and then you have things like education, healthcare and insurance. Also inflation numbers are usually reported comparing the difference in the last 12 months, you are probably thinking about the pre-pandemic prices so you'll have to add them up.

CPI doesn't generally include housing costs, that's usually a seperate measure (CPIH or RPI in the UK).

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#203
post #61
post #35

Doesnt' every country calculate their inflation separately? Because living in Germany, that 7% is laughable. Nothing has risen by that little of an amount. Not food, rent, petrol, etc. Well, I do know of something that has risen to less than 7%: salaries.

When I look at the Swedish numbers I feel the same and then I see that prices went down for "photography, audiovisual and computer equipment" and... Nothing else. Fuel is up 40+%, food by 8-10%, housing by 2%, electricity by 30+%. How the fuck do we end up with a normalised rate of inflation of 6-7%?? I do need to do proper research on the models because just using my common sense it doesn't make any fucking sense...

If housing is truly only up 2%, it probably makes up 25%+ of the basket.

If Food is only up 8% - it's not too hard to imagine how you could get a 7% number...

Electricity and fuel don't make up a huge portion of the average consumer's total basket of spending.

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#204
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but for me there should be two types of inflations 1. a dilution of money Outside of the fact that "some people say" (generally anti-fed types) that inflation is an increase in the money supply, why is it you think that? In economics inflation has a specific definition: a general rise in the price level. It can be caused by all kinds of things. A rapid rise in the money supply is one. A breakdown in available suppl…

> It can be caused by all kinds of things. In theory water can run uphill. Sometimes it even does. But as a matter of overwhelming practice it is obvious that if the general price of goods is rising it is the government doing something. Otherwise there is nearly nothing that could cause a correlated rise of the price of everything. Eg, in this case the most likely culprit is wilfully shutting down the global economy…

>In theory water can run uphill. Sometimes it even does. But as a matter of overwhelming practice it is obvious that if the general price of goods is rising it is the government doing something. Otherwise there is nearly nothing that could cause a correlated rise of the price of everything.

This caused general inflation of nearly everything https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970s_energy_crisis

There is never a perfectly correlated rise in the price of everything no matter what happens. Some prices are stickier than others.

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#205

I'm wondering what kind of investment vehicle or financial strategy you can possibly use to counter these kind of percentages reliably.

For EU the best seems like real estate in desirable areas.

Real estate is up 200% or more in many countries.

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#206
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I look at the Swedish numbers I feel the same and then I see that prices went down for "photography, audiovisual and computer equipment" and... Nothing else. Fuel is up 40+%, food by 8-10%, housing by 2%, electricity by 30+%. How the fuck do we end up with a normalised rate of inflation of 6-7%?? I do need to do proper research on the models because just using my common sense it doesn't make any fucking sense...

> How the fuck do we end up with a normalised rate of inflation of 6-7%? I don't know about Sweden, but the BLS publishes their data and methodology for the CPI calculation. You can quibble about details, that's fair, but it's transparent. It's based on a basket of goods and proportional spending on those goods in the basket. In some calculations food and fuel are excluded because of volatility (controversial, for ob…

Being open about the methodology doesn't mean nobody is actively trying to game it. Replacing A-status products with B-status products, or removing controversial items from the basket and added different products that have favorable inflation effects is actively being done by most countries.

Also; this basket doesn't look at things like shrinkflation, such as the size of a snickers bar, or the number of pyramids in a Toblerone bar.

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#207
post #168
post #64

Estonian here, the situation is getting quite bad indeed, particularly when it comes to petrol/energy prices, which of course has the domino effect of driving up other goods and services in the mid to long term. However, in true Estonian fashion, a lot of people (probably majority) might complain within their familily/friend circle, but will mostly just suffer through it. In fact, 10 years ago, two local comedian-act…

> However, in true Estonian fashion, a lot of people (probably majority) might complain within their familily/friend circle, but will mostly just suffer through it. I think this is a generally post-soviet thing.

Eh, this is the attitude in most of Western Europe as well

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Lithuania we were already independent from Russian gas and oil (lesson learned over the decades), and had liquid natural gas terminal for a few years. But inflation is also very high.

> Here in Lithuania we were already independent from Russian gas and oil Is that a fact? I know that Lithuania doesn't buy Russian oil and gas directly , but it always seemed to me that it is still the same Russian oil and gas, just through an intermediate supplier.

They buy US gas

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#209
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic econometrics is now useless under the parole of “lies, damn lies”. Good stuff. How about you propose a different metric then, that surely will be infallible and completely fair to everyone.

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"You know" will not do its job, when you're dealing with complex systems. (Or, in my opinion, at any part of life.) You know why don't the web developers just put on the button on the website? You know just a normal button. And it just needs to work normally.

On the other hand, I understand the disillusion and the distrust in the establishment, and in experts. People appoint themselves as experts all the time, and put down others by implying that the other don't understand the thing.

In case of the current inflation, I don't think that this is what's happening. The source of distrust, I think, is the basic understanding of the metric itself, and the implications drawn from it. For example, that one's monthly spending should be the same amount higher as the inflation. In this regard, inflation is meaningless, at most it's a rule of thumb of sorts.

Politicians, of course, will lie to you, and they'll be using anything, including numbers, to back it up. But that still doesn't mean that the method to calculate inflation is meaningless. For one, you can do it for yourself - which is of course hard, because I don't imagine you have historical data for prices of a bunch of products. But for example, if you're willing to trust another source, premium users of Numbeo can get a bunch of historical data, from which you could calculate inflation to your liking, including the products/services you actually buy and use.

Re: Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent

#210

Inflation is highly manipulated by goverment and is usually 2x lower than real inflation. On the following site you can check the inflation calculated based on the past methods (before 1990): http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts as you can see, inflation calculated using the old method is 2x higher than the current one (8% vs 16%)

Shadowstats's methodology is not uncontested by the way. That said, CPI is actively manipulated by governments worldwide.
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