For most citizens, our major challenge today is to fight the rise in prices for consumables that matter most to us: food, housing, clothing, and transportation.

Over the past 5 years, the government's official measurement—the Consumer Price Index (CPI)—shows a cumulative increase of about 20 percent. A visit to the store by any consumer, however, tells a much different story. We see price jumps much more than the 20 percent CPI. It is common to see some items jump 30 percent or more, and that continues in 2025.

Frank Shostak, in his article "Inflation Is Not Price Increases. Inflation Causes Price Increases," states, "Despite its popularity, the idea of a consumer price index (CPI) is flawed. It is based on the view that it is possible to establish an average of prices of goods and services, which is not possible." The article continues, "Inflation is not caused by the actions of private citizens, but by the government: by an artificial expansion of the money supply required to support deficit spending."

From a money supply perspective, the biggest government boondoggle ever was during covid, when $6 trillion fiat dollars were injected into the existing $15 trillion dollar money supply. Effectively, this influx of cash increased dollars used in trade for each citizen from $50,000 in 2020 ($15 billion dollars/288 million citizens) to $75,000 in 2022 ($21 billion dollars/291 million citizens). With a 50 percent increase of money in the hands of buyers, price inflation is axiomatic.

In 2022, the Fed decided to aggressively fight inflation by increasing the federal funds rate (FFR) from a low between 0.0-0.25 percent in March 2020 to 5.00 percent—5.25 percent in February 2023. The Fed also announced it would be embarking on a Quantitative Tightening (QT) program for 12 months starting in June 2022 allowing $1 trillion worth of securities and bonds, held as assets, to mature without replacement. This shrinks the money supply as it reduces the reserves held at the Regional Reserve Banks, which slowly reduces the amount of loans they can make. QT began in 2022 with monthly caps of $60 billion for Treasuries and $35 billion for Mortgage Based Securities (MBS). In June 2024, the Treasury cap was reduced to $25 billion/month and in April 2025 to $5 billion/month; the MBS cap remained unchanged.