Kenneth Deffeyes Interview
Borrowing from this Land of Black Gold post:
An audio interview with Kenneth Deffeyes, the author of “Beyond Oil“, is available from Jim Puplava.
It’s one of those things where you have to listen, and balance realistic caution, while perhaps filtering out the apocalyptic.
May 24th, 2005 at 8:32 am
I listened to this yesterday, and I wondered — did Deffeyes even read the CPI FAQ? It does include energy and food.
BTW, your cheesy anti-spam feature should allow users to repeat the name in case they forget. I had to retype my entire comment.
May 24th, 2005 at 11:54 am
Sorry about the comment thing. I haven’t become a real WordPress hacker at this point …
On the CPI, I have heard folks claim there are cheats in the numbers before. It’s not something I’ve looked into, but my natural reacion was that given a 1) formula designed by the federal government and 2) a long term need to keep the result down that we might get 3) “tweaks” to that formula over time.
FWIW, this guy also says:
The reason the core rate goes up so slowly is because it is carefully designed to leave out the key expenses that really affect our lives and go up in price such as energy costs, food, and housing.
I think one of the factors here is that there are a number of “CPI” results now, with dash-letter designations, and some of those dash-letter CPIs might be the ones used as “input” to other government systems.
I’ve also heard that there are touchy-feely “quality of life” factors that can be tweaked.
Do I know the bottom line? No. I just have a general trust-mistrust relationship with the number.
May 24th, 2005 at 12:02 pm
Also found this article that talks about CPI vs “core CPI” … the latter, you might have guessed it … is the one without food or energy.
Now, the question is … who is using “core CPI” and when?