August 13, 2025

(IS DATA REAL OR JUST A CONJURING OF WHAT THE GOVERNMENT WANTS US TO KNOW RATHER THAN WHAT WE NEED TO KNOW)

August 13, 2025

Hello everyone

Does anyone remember the English series “Yes, Minister”? It cleverly highlighted the goings on inside a British government department, where we got to understand how much is really hidden from the public, and how information is skewed for easy public digestion.

Information is released on a ‘need to know’ basis only. The question always is, does the public need to know this? Or how can we fudge it so it is more digestible?

Going forward, the Trump administration is going down the rabbit hole of apparently bamboozling the public, so no one will ever feel completely confident if a data point is real or not. In the end, people will end up being so confused that they will just ignore everything. A clever tactic to gain control and manage the public’s perception of reality.

The CPI released data yesterday, which showed a slight cooling in inflation.

Markets cheered.

But let’s consider reality for a moment.

Are things getting cheaper?

Not, from what I’m experiencing.

And I’m sure, I’m not the only one who feels this way.

Institutional money is not buying the rally in the stock market. When the CPI came out, the 10-year yields rose. The bond market is telling a different story from the stock market and appears to be detecting that inflation is remaining stubbornly high.

When you take out food, energy, shelter, and rent costs, inflation was running at a 3.21% rate last month, much higher than the 2.7% headline annual rate that was slightly less than what economists expected and sparked the equity rally.

Supercore inflation, which removes food, energy, shelter, and rent costs, is what the Fed looks at, and the bond market has this in its sights as well.

Hedge fund analysts note that the hidden inflation is good for hard assets like gold, silver, platinum, palladium, copper, etc.

The big money is basically buying anything that comes out of the ground.

The government cannot outmaneuver the bond market; it tells it like it is.

So, the big question is what the Fed is going to do at the September meeting. There is now a 95 per cent expectation that it will cut rates. Will it bend to pressure or not?

QI CORNER

Marjanul Islam