INFLATION AND DEFLATION BOTH ECONOMIST RED HERRINGS

I should point out,

that, when you are gradually, inch by monthly inch, slowly, annually, becoming a third world economy, trading down, down, to cheaper and cheaper produced goods, to the bottom;

reducing prices, down, down, to cheaper and cheaper priced goods,

to the bottom, you tend,

almost by inertia,

to steer a path, because you have to,

between little blips of inflation, or deflation,

sort of looking for a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, perpetual 'soft landing',
at the 'greatest good for the greatest numbers' airfield (let's not call it an airport).

That is what the US 'economy' if one can speak about such a thing, has been doing.

That is why we haven't had much 'overt' inflation, because we have been buying, and producing offshore more cheaply, goods made offshore.

That also is why we haven't had deflation, because their offshore costs were less, for a little while, and printing fiat money to buy them, so long as the money is accepted, wards off symptoms of deflation.

Keeping prices, and wages, gradually 'trickling down' (a different idiom: UNPROSPERITY TRICKLING DOWN) more or less together,

WHERE'S THE BEEF?

Krugman has put his finger on it, domestic jobs, that is the 'sticky wicket' in the whole sordid process, inasmuch as more and more work, of whatever kind, goes offshore, there remain fewer jobs, of any kind, to fund purchase of those cheaper offshore goods.

The other aspect of the situation, re currencies, aside from inflation/deflation, is that these producing countries have begun to realize that US currency is really backed by nothing anymore, no productivity, no specie, nothing.

One takes it, as a medium of exchange, largely hoping to prop up temporarily (self interest) the stultifera navis, and/or to get something of real value from third parties (the old eurodollar situation now globalized).

The Bretton Woods system, flawed from the outset, gold standard even abandoned by US in '71-72(?), a prescription for market sloth, and manipulations of all kinds.

It is not that complicated, really.