oh the gift...

Two curious pieces of news: one the change of gift card redemption patterns at big box retailers, the other in the CPI.

Market research show people redeeming christmas gift cards later and for necessities not trinkets - the article is light on data but interesting anecdotally and consistent with local anecdoted

In the meantime the shadowstats website has some interesting inflation and money-supply data

Even the official Consumer Price Index is rising at above 4.3% - the site claims that weighted by pre-1980 baskets, the old style CPI is rising at over 12%.
Certainly price inflation of essentials - food and fuel - has been very high, and it is hard to offset those costs with consumer electronics for the majority of the population. Can't eat HDTV and Dell Desktops.

Of course there has not been an associated wage inflation over the last few years.

Obvious solutions are either ye olde style inflation, with a couple of loops of wage inflation to try to catch up on consumer prices - this would preserve the last few years of asset inflation (ie housing prices) to some extent.
Alternative is stagnant or declining wages and asset deflation, which is bad.
Very bad.

Even the price of beer is going up
Hm, it'd be interesting to see Boston Housing prices normalised to numbers of six packs of Sam Adams.
I get about 48,000-50,000 six packs of Sam Adams for a median house in Boston at the start of 2008.
This will of course vary depending on what you pay for your six-pack. PA is not the best guide to real beer prices.

h/t bonddad at kos

Hope y'all got your TIAA-CREF accounts out of stocks already...

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Beer prices are up because of the increasing price of hops.

This affects craft beers more than, say, Bud.

See this article

By Brad Holden (not verified) on 20 Feb 2008 #permalink

I was talking about beer.
Not overpriced overgassy discoloured water...

Did I ever tell you about the time I was responsible for Bud becoming popular in the UK...?

Duh. I guess I should have read the article.

By Brad Holden (not verified) on 20 Feb 2008 #permalink

You made Bud popular in the UK? I have heard of this, but I had no idea it was your fault. Are you allowed back in the country?

By Brad Holden (not verified) on 20 Feb 2008 #permalink

Ah, well not a lot of people knew that...

When I were a lad, I went to the University of Sussex as a ugrad.
While there, I acquired a license to sell alcohol in the County of Sussex and made my contribution to the general welfare by being one of the bar managers at "East Slope", a student run bar on campus. It was, allegedly, the largest single front bar in the South of England.
It also had a large captive highly desirable 18-19 demographic within easy stumbling distance.

It was a free bar, but we had an informal arrangement with Courage breweries and got good deals on their session and premium beers.

So, back then, the world was going through one of these weird upbeat, aggressive, pro-american phases, with every 19 year old thinking they'd be a millionaire by the time they were 30. Some of them were right, but they paid for it, they had really bizarro hairdos.

So, Courage decided to introduce the Budweiser brand to the UK.
It is nothing like the US Bud - it was a high alcohol content premium lager, sold at a high end market price point.
The initial launch had a TV campaign featuring two US comedians that no one on the island had ever heard of, doing New York street comedy, that made no connection to the target audience. The ad I remember involved breaking a fire hydrant - very dumb.

Product launch was a total flop.

So, we, me and three others, met with a couple of Courage senior reps, and had a long discussion with them about why this went wrong - we were one of the kick-off bars and we had THE target audience captive.

They actually took our suggestions seriously, relaunched the product in London with a big party and a locally produced TV campaign that was a big hit, and within months it was a major success - a must drink for any aspiring yuppie in the south east UK having a lunch pint or a couple of quick ones after work.

I am so sorry.
Although, as I said, it was totally unlike US bud and not that bad a beer.

The launch party in London was quite good, I have very fond memories of it.
I still have quite a lot of the promo stuff scattered about, for many years I had a ridiculous number of Bud bar towels in my possession.

When my father became concerned about the beer at his college bar, they didn't need to go to such lengths; there was a gal called either "Shepherd" or "Neame" in the class, and yes, that was Shepherd (or Neame) as in Shepherd Neame beer.