Cheer deflation if you are, as am I, enslaved to legally lethal products.
"U.S. consumer prices posted a second straight record decline last month, falling 1.7% on a seasonally adjusted basis. That is the largest drop since the government started compiling the figures in 1947 and well in excess of the 1.3% decline Wall Street economists had expected. Excluding food and energy, prices were unchanged."
Source:WSJ news alert.
The markets for real goods and services are clearing. Even we nicotine addicts have reason to cheer. Just bought a package of Marlboro from my friendly neighborhood Hess station in New York (the cheapest legal outlet I can find) and was delighted to learn the price had dropped from $7.86 to $7.15. Just a week or two ago, the price was $8.06. It seems that even products with inelastic demand must bend to the harsh whip of demand for cheap substitutes.
"Something must be going on," said my gregarious friend who clerks behind bullet proof glass. He said it ominously, conditioned, I assumed, to prices of tobacco forever rising in sync with the drumbeat of the influential healthy lifestyle lobby that heaps steep taxes upon sinners in this state.
So in this season of light, let us light up with butane or paper matches. Those $100 bills we used in boom times are becoming more valuable day by day.
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