Year: 2015

Black Friday or January?

That is the main driver to get out of bed at 4 AM on a holiday morning and take up the keyboard.

Which date-range offers better deals?

Today is when we can see the ultimate in monetization of a holiday…

A quick Google search reveals an almost unlimited number of websites that have capitalized on the term “black Friday.”  A sample Google search is here.

The way this works is very simple.

1.  You get as domain name which has the term blackfriday buried in it somewhere.

2.  You sign up for as many affiliate marketing programs as you can.

3.  You write enough 500-word articles to optimize the hell out of things so you get some web traffic.

4.  Then you load your site up with Amazon and whoever else you’ve signed up with.

When people come to your site today…and click on a link…it sets a cookie which means any sales that happen are credited to your account.

And (so goes the dream) you become an internet gazillionaire.

To be sure, a few sites will do pretty well…but the revenue stream gets pretty close to dead the rest of the year.  I, for one, hate lumpy revenue models because they are harder to budget around.

As to our actual spending plans?

Easy-peasy:  We will be sending out checks this year (from the National Bank of Dad).

Each will be accompanied by a monograph on how Black Friday is a retailer scam to get people to buy things that are fairly useless.

That report will explain that most things will be found on sale in January or February and will extoll the virtues of refurbished items.

Sure, it would be fun to have a fiber internet link, a 32 GB 8-core processors at 4.4 GHZ and terabyte graphics drivers and 73-inch monitors.

But to play CandyCrush?  Are you serious?

Still, we understand how people work, so here’s our own contribute to BFAOD (Black Friday Ad Overdose):

Usually, around the Thanksgiving table (which we are foregoing for a week or two) there is much discussion about how my “check and think about it” approach shows what a cold-hearted person I really am.

After I point out this is exactly the kind of thing that pays the most in the business world, I report that in going on 409-years of check-writing, I have never had one returned as defective and everyone is pleased to get them.

Here is this year’s Disbursement Letter:

Dear National Bank of Dad  (NBoD) Customer:

Seasonal Adjustments!  The National Bank of Dad wishes to inform you as follows:   

This years gift disbursement is adjusted for the cost of living adjustment to our Social Security income.  Since there has been no increase, there is no increase in disbursement planned for Gifting Season 2015.

NBoD Customers may refer to the Social Security website here for current gifting parameters.

Our anticipation is that the increase – if any – for the 2016 season, will be held to a fraction of one percent.  The good news about this is you are able to calculate your NBoD Gift disbursement almost a year in advance.

NBoD customers are alerted to a forthcoming internal accounting change that will take place in 2016.

Effective July 1, 2016, the National Bank of Dad will be implementing a significant change in accounting policies.

Where previously we had used Current Adjusted Gross Income (CAGI) as our calculation basis for gifting, in 2016 we will be transition to the Modified Adjusted Gross Income Crap (MAGIC).

The key difference between these two accounting systems is very simple. Previously-used  AGI-based accounting has reflected income on current-year operations.

MAGIC-based accounting reflects current year income plus an increasing allowance for the accelerated depreciation of NBoD Trustee’s bodies:  This includes changes in eyesight, memory, muscle tone, stamina, and so forth.

Our new MAGIC accounting is also adjusted for your location on Gifting Days.  Checks and EFTs disbursed  to zip codes outside of Anderson County Texas, will be levied a 75% handling charge.  NBoD customers may therefore find it advantageous to visit NBoD headquarters and for this purposed we have a new Airfare Matching Program.  Inquire of the Chief Teller for details. A meal will be provided.

Your NBoD Trustees have implemented numerous cost-savings programs this year to maximize your benefit.  For example:  We are no longer providing accidental birth insurance to Trustees.  We have also ended all political contributions.

Unfortunately, we anticipate that new banking regulations will be invented by the Obama administration in the coming year that will require equal disbursement levels for Middle East refugees and other illegal aliens.

Therefore, we are continuing last year’s special offer of a $200 rebate to all NBoD customers and offspring who change to Black, Hispanic, or Asian surnames.  According to our records, special consideration for Scottish, Danish, Germanic, and Cherokee (1/8) refugees has expired. 

We continue to support name-changing as a revenue and benefit optimizing tool.  The $200 rebate per name-change is available only to families of participating customers.  Changed names may be used to advantage but generally work best 1,000-miles, or more, north of the former Mexico border.

Whatever.

George Ure Jackson Xi Hernandez , Chief Operating Officer.

Elaine Lightfoot Bates- Ure Washington Perez , Chief Teller

Member:  Federal Dad Insurance Corp., Cash Flow Matters

Home, Sick

(Back at the Ranch) For those interested in our gallivanting around the past two weeks: 

We rolled in about  4:45 last night.  Just in time to find out that Elaine’s brother (Panama) had been shipped up to the hospital in Tyler, TX because of a suspected heart issue.

We respectfully request your prayers for his speedy recovery as surgery is planned this morning.  Angio and stent if I’m following; not his first rodeo on this stuff.  I’m not sure if website content is government by HIPAA regs, so forget I said anything.

Bates is in remarkably good spirits about it and quipped that it may seem a bit of an extreme method to get out of eating my Thanksgiving Turkey.  Hmmm…

However, I informed him that since we didn’t do any grocery shopping on the way home, we can push back the turkey for a few days to a week.

For readers (and especially subscribers), yes, this is another example of what we call “the Bates Luck” around here.

—

Zeus The Cat has also taken ill with a slight cough and he’s being quite lethargic.  So it will be off to the vet Friday for him.

—

Elaine reported that she’s feeling a bit better this morning, but I’m a little worse for the wear, so with apologies, it will be back to bed as soon as the column is posted.

“Feed a cold and you’ll soon be starving a fever…” seems like good advice to follow.  The turkey will wait…

More tomorrow…

P.S.

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(Amarillo, TX)  Still trying to get back to our ranch-stead in what we call the East Texas Outback, at least eight-hours of driving lies ahead with both of us suffering from the misery of a cold/flu that has dogged us since Las Vegas.

On the way, we have been going back and forth as we travel about what the best personal financial strategies are for the period from now to 10-years out.

And it all comes down to turkey.

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(Albuquerque, NM)  Just out from S&P, Case-Shiller, et al.

New York, November 24, 2015 – S&P Dow Jones Indices today released the latest results for the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices. Data released today for September 2015 show that home prices continued their rise across the country over the last 12 months.

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(Albuquerque, NM)  We have two days left on out adventure and then we will be back to the relative safety of the ranch in the Outback of East Texas.

Since we have been staying many places (and sleeping in many strange beds) the level of “dream activity” has been inconsistent but instructive.

As you know, I have been tinkering with my dream states for a long time.  There seem to be “personal best” periods of the year for me – in the March/April period and again in the period just ending.

Sunday, before leaving Payson, Arizona, for example, I had a dandy which I could label as “engineering the afterlife.

The main idea of it is that since time immemorial, a lot of humans have lived and died.

In fact, with a little research (and getting sidetracked by interesting articles like this one) we find that about 107-billion people have ever lived, since the most recent human hardware and software updates of 50,000 years ago.

Because there are 7-billion people alive today, this means the number of dead people – wherever dead people go – is an impressive 100,000,000,000. (100-billion)

So in this dream, my subconscious was telling me “The afterlife – if real – is a pretty big gathering…”

Looking for answers about the afterlife – from an engineering standpoint – is a bit difficult.

While many of the world’s religions allege to know how it all works, the best evidence of how at least the leading-edge of the afterlife seems to come from studies of people who have been through the near-death experience.  These are called NDE’s for short.

There is a gob of Wikipedia reference work on that topic over here.

In particular, the part of NDE research that I find most interesting is the 4-18.9% recall level of NDEs. 

Two thoughts keep percolating around in my head:

One is that the percentage of people who have recall of NDEs may be roughly the same as the number of people who can recall their dreams when sleeping.  A article of a couple of years ago mentioned that some people recall dreams only a couple of times per month while others recall dreams 5+ times per week.  It will take more research to see how close the “dream recall” is to the “NDE recall” level, but that is one line of inquiry that seems very useful.

The second thought deals with Monday’s column and how some people (see the comments section) report seeing something going on behind their eyelids…but, as in my experience with it so far, it doesn’t seem to be of any understandable/useful benefit.

Which then gets us to looking (as an engineering problem) at what happens at the moment of death and the timeframe when the body floods itself with DMT.  Another Wikipedia extract:

Dr. Rick Strassman, while conducting DMT research in the 1990s at the University of New Mexico, advanced the controversial hypothesis that a massive release of DMT from the pineal gland prior to death or near death was the cause of the near death experience (NDE) phenomenon.

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(Payson, AZ)  The Fed is holding a special emergency session today.

The notice on their website says (in part):

It is anticipated that the closed meeting of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System at 11:30 AM on Monday, November 23, 2015, will be held under expedited procedures, as set forth in section 26lb.7 of the Board’s Rules Regarding Public Observation of Meetings, at the Board’s offices at 20th Street and C Streets, N.W., Washington, D.C. The following items of official Board business are tentatively scheduled to be considered at that meeting.

Meeting Date: Monday, November 23, 2015

Matter(s) Considered

1.Review and determination by the Board of Governors of the advance and discount rates to be charged by the Federal Reserve Banks.

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(Payson, AZ)  Note to self:  Send a copy of this morning’s column to Dr. Rob, our genius-level friend who is on the leading edge of photobiomodulation.

While some people’s personal “energy” gets turned on by places like Sedona, AZ, I’m not one of them.  For me, Sedona was beautiful (north of the town up to Flagstaff), but spirit-wise, it is just another place.

On the other hand,  the high mountain country around Payson does seem to have quite an impact on my personal awareness. 

This morning I want to share a venture “off the page” as I show you how to “see your own source code and then speculate a bit about what it all MIGHT mean.

This was a purely accidental discovery.

Accessing Your Personal Source Code

Up front:  I didn’t go looking for this.  It just happened first about six-months ago.

I had been sleeping peacefully when I woke up (as people will do now and then) in the middle of the night.

It was 1:52 AM.

I know what time it was because I have a small Indiglo-lit portable alarm clock next to the bed.  Bright bluish-green/.gray background lighting.

I had grabbed it, pressed the snooze-button to turn on the display backlight, and yes, 1:52 AM.

Bright as hell, by the way.  No mistaking anything.  After that, I closed my eyes and started to go back to sleep.

Cue the weirdness:

As I was drifting off to sleep, I was vaguely aware of keeping my internal consciousness softly focused on that white/light gray rectangle of light that was (as any scientist would tell you) retinal afterburn.

A quick note about afterburn:

While many people claim to see auras around people’s faces when they stare at them long enough, they (honestly) claim to see an outline around the person they are looking at.  This is afterburn.

The eyes see something with well-defined edges, and because of the mechanics of how people’s eyes work, they may be tricked – in some cases easily – into seeing an outline of a person’s face when they close their eyes.  Upon opening them again, they may also see what might be interpreted as a “halo” around them.

The effect also works if you can hold your focus on a person’s face for 20-seconds or so.  You will see around people (and objects against a high-contrast background) something of a “halo” evolve.  This may have spiritual aspects to it, but if you look at a person a long while (a minute or longer) and then look at an even surface (like a wall), you will see the outline of their face.

Welcome to retinal afterburn.  >>Many people call this an aura.<<  Because color may vary (based on backgrounds and lighting) all kinds of mystical crap is attributed to it.

Honestly, I don’t buy it.  I’ve seen way too much optical science and I know how to trick the eyes.  That ain’t woo-woo.  What it does mean is that you have become acutely aware of your optical channel…and that may help get down to yours personal source code.

You “source code” is different, however and very, very strange.

The way the phenomena seems to work is as follows:

You must begin in a nearly-asleep state and just ready to flip over into the full sleep mode.  Have to be in a blacked out room, too.  We’re looking to get down in the noise floor of what goes on in your brain.

Second:  You need an even BRIGHT light source to blast your eyes while you are still semi-asleep.

You will apply a very, very bright flash of light,  and then watch the afterburn as you float off toward sleep.

That’s it: You simply watch the rectangle of pretty even afterburn. 

In my case, as soon as the whitish-green afterburn had faded to a medium/to slightly dark (60%) black if you’re into graphics), a series of symbols started to fly by.  They were being painted on the gray rectangle.

I don’t know if you remember the Matrix screen-saver – where the odd symbols sort of waterfall down, but this was a single line of black letters/symbols and it was flashing as lines of code going by.

It was some seriously weird stuff.

Following that experience, I have only been able to accomplish it a few times since.  But in all cases, it was a) waking up in the middle of the night in a blacked-out room, b) flashing a bright light source (my alarm clock), and finally c) watching the afterburn fade off (in other words looking at the optic nerve input semi-consciously, without getting to intense. 

It only works when not forced and it works best during your normal sleeping cycle (at least it does for me).

I am using the Indiglo lit alarm as my even “light pump” and I haven’t tried to optimize the color spectrum to enhance the effect.  I’m guessing that the duration of afterburn (or dissolve rate) will vary based on colors.  I don’t  have a precise color measurement of the Indiglo but using the conversion tool over here, I would put it somewhere around  the 477 nm range – which translates to rgb(0,200, 255),Hex: #00c8ff.

What I would expect is that if you pump (light input) in the 500-620 nm range, since that seems to “pump” my eyes very well.

The whole field of photobiomodulation is just now opening up as a new branch of science.  In a Peoplenomics.com report, I mentioned a company up in Washington state that owns some key technology in photobiomodulation as relates to halting (or seriously slowing) macular degeneration.  A discussion of how photobiomodulation works in the clinical setting may be found on the company website over here.

I won’t go into a detailed discussion of how this works, but the main point is that light-pumping at a certain mix of frequencies, apparently tells the body to do certain beneficial things.

The effect we’re talking about this morning is not a direct application of that, but when I first saw symbology streaming by in the afterburn dissolve, it was a genuine WTF?

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(Phoenix, AZ)  In our Coping section following the main news events that will drive life, we get into it much more deeply, but we are braced for a “week of terror” around the world as ISIS has plans to kill a couple of hundred hostages this morning in Mali.

I’m sure some bleeding-heart idiot will claim “You don’t KNOW they are planning to kill anyone…” 

But I would say “STFU and get a grip. And wake up SecState Sleepy Kerry while you’re at it.”

You don’t take over a hotel at gunpoint and round up 200 people at gunpoint in Mali because you’re planning to make them cheese blintzes, for God’s sake. 

The weak—minded leadership of America is still selling the BS about “We can’t use religion as a basis for Immigration discrimination.”

Dead Frigging Wrong.

We can do anything we want because you freaking idiots, OUR CONSTITUTION APPLIES ONLY AND EXCLUSIVELY TO CITIZENS AND LEGAL IMMIGRANTS – NOT FAKE PASSPORT HOLDERS WHO ARE INVADERS.

(This can’t be that hard…you can’t be that dumb (or…)

People in Russia don’t have Constitutional Protections of our Constitution.  They have their own.

To make the point clear (in case the coffee is decaf this morning)  U.S. Constitutional Rights do not apply to people from Spain…the protections only apply to LEGALLY ACCEPTED RESIDENT ALIENS AND CITIZENS.

These bleeding-hearts are dumber than sticks when comes to law.  They are also importing trouble.  And yes, Obama is an idiot, but you needed only to look at his poor choices as SecStates to figure that one out.

Let me take a moment to commend the clear-thinking New York Post which sums things up this way:

Team Obama’s ridiculous Paris remarks highlight its lame mindset on ISIS

I’m sure Kerry is very good at wearing a penguin suit and toasting this and that.  But when comes to being hoodwinked by lying scum who want to kill or convert us, he’s drunk the liberal Kool-Aid.

This is the kind of thinking would blame Pearl Harbor on a “few Japanese sight-seeing planes having engine trouble…”  It is extremely distasteful, disappointing, and treasonous.

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(Phoenix, AZ)  As the weekend begins, there are a couple of items that are making us very nervous about being so far away from the ranch back home in Texas.

We have also gone into “gas tank never less than 3/4-full mode.  That gets us the largest number of options.

First, a couple of items to put it all into perspective.

We had a very nice dinner with Elaine’s son who lives in Phoenix, last night.

But getting back to our temporary abode was a bit more difficult than expected.  I made it to the final turn, from where a six-block stretch would have finished up the day. 

Instead, I turned right (instead of left) and didn’t figure out the error for five miles.  So a 10-mile detour, late, in the dark on the way home to the hotel/resort.  Is this a teaching moment from Universe about the dangers of turning right, when sometimes left works?  I doubt it.

But it underscored the importance of operating on home turf.  Areas you know well – and now, thanks to a late night navigation error, just how important “home field advantage is, has really sunk in.  Again.

The real star of Friday here in the Phoenix area was electricity.

Power went off at our hotel about 10:30-11:00.  And it was off until almost 1:00 PM.

Large portions of the Maricopa County area were offline, although the local news-talk station didn’t know about it, until my long-time friend up in the Seattle area called to inquire.  This morning there is no follow-up on the cause, but the outage probably impacted more than a 100,000  people.

Since the outage was of less than three-hours duration, it hasn’t made any of the news organizations in the area…and the power was on all night by all accounts.  That cacophony of cell phone and wake-up call happened at precisely the same time.

The reason I have been so nervous about the week-long period of events ahead, and why it’s a good time to be mentally braced for it starting today, has to do with this email about what may be a prophetic dream by a reader named Dave.

This came in Monday and I wasn’t going to mention it to you, but now that we’ve had a power outage and the Muslim crazies are about to kill 200 in Mali, time to get the antennae up:

George,  I don’t know if you remember the email I sent you a few months back about the dream I had many years ago. It was about the new fangled lites that were coming out. When those lites came out, in the dream, I was installing them when all hell broke loose on the planet.

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The monthly rush to speculate on whether and when the Fed will actually get around to raising interest rates is underway in earnest.

The minutes of the previous Fed meeting seem to hint that the “recovery” may be far enough along to raise rates in December.

But before you get really excited, let’s look at a little hard reality.

First there is the 10-year Treasury.  Check the chart over here and you will see that in the past year we have already seen almost 2.5% and on Wednesday, the 10-year closed at 2.269%.

What that seems to tell me is that the market isn’t too sure about this yet.  If it was, the rates might already have moved back up to nearer that 2 1/2% level.  Or, they will edge up in coming weeks ahead of the mid-December meeting with the decision due on the 17th if I’m  reading their calendar right.

Gold is looking pretty skeptical, too.

As the pre-open chart from our friends over at Kitco shows (click here for current), there hasn’t exactly been a rush to load up on the yeller dog.  In fact. I would think that if the Fed really were about to raise rates, rather than just talk our ears off, again, we would be seeing a lot more reaction than the muted response evident so far.

Still, the hype machine is ramping up:  “U.S. Federal Reserve signals December rate hike more likely” is how one outlet is seeing it.

Here is the exercise I keep running through my head.

Let’s say that the Public Debt is really $18.7-trillion dollars.  I know, it’s more, you know it’s more – likely closer to $25-trillion – but let’s pretend, since that’s how mass delusions work.

Let’s also think that the current interest rate is 2.25% for the long term debt and say that it goes up to 2.5% by the time of the Fed meeting and they really raise and it goes to 2.75% subsequent to their meeting.

At 2.25%, the interest ALONE on the federal debt is (at least) $420.75 billion per year. 

Let’s also assume only working people pay for the national debt.  As one of about 148-million people working, your piece of the rock is $2,842.90 per year just for the debt service.

Now, let’s see what 2.75% does, shall we?

Clicks up to $680 billion of interest expense and your working person’s share is what?

$4,594.60.

In other words, the portion of working person debt service will go up how much?  61.6%!

Now pretend you are a working person.

Let’s see what’s on the horizon for 2016 just on Obamacare:  Penalties are going up dramatically – to 2.5% of modified adjusted gross income.  If you make $80,000 as a couple and have skated on healthcare, that would be a potential hit of  $2,000 for not getting Obamacare. 

Since two people are working, that’s an increase of $2,000 on top of $3,503.40 which is two working people’s share of the higher interest rate on the national debt.  $5,503 or $458.61 in monthly income.

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(Phoenix, AZ)  Time to consider changes to the UrbanSurvival web site.  You’re a reader, so time to toss in your 2-cents worth.

Yeah, I know… been a semi-daily fixture of how many mornings now since we fired off the site in 1997…

But this trip on the road has about killed me:  I awoke yesterday morning at 3 AM local time, wrote the column until 6 AM, and went back to bed for two more hours of sleep.  And here I am this morning – 3 AM again – finding out that the wake-up call on the hotel wake-up system must be set to a pretty good clock, as both the cell phone alarm and the landline go off within a second or two of one-another.

Not to whine (although this may be taken that way), but I am thinking about changing the publishing schedule around here so that Urban would be published after the markets have closed for the day.

On days when there is “offishul big news/bs” – things like the purported inflation data, housing starts, retail sales, and unemployment, I would do a “special update” on a weekday morning.

But the amount of brain power available at 3 AM in the Mountain Time Zone seems less than at 4 AM in the Central Time Zone, even though by circadian department says it’s the same thing and I’m a moron.  Or, did they say buffoon?

So here’s what’s up for discussion:  Flex Publishing.

There would be an UrbanSurvival report available from, oh, around 8 PM on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings.  Our Peoplenomics.com subscriber newsletter would be out on Tuesday evenings and Friday evenings.

And, on days of meaningful reports, a short update – but not every day.  Or, I would include a link to the propaganda/.gov posting the news.

The idea is that Elaine and I would then be (more or less) on the same “sleep cycle” and I wouldn’t be sleeping in “split-shift” fashion.

Not that the clarity of thought would improve; no promises there.

However, it would be useful –especially when traveling – to be able to watch the evening news shows and then sleep 8-hours, rather than going to bed at 6 PM when the rest of the (west coast and mid-west) world is still meandering home from work.

There are several publishing time options that  work better (for me) than the current regimen:

Publish at 8:00 AM Eastern, which is what we do now.  Benefits:  We can size up overnight futures and morning press releases.  Neutral:  We can still do a long drive or flying jaunt – we just expect more turbulence and hotter weather in the summertime.  Negative:  Split-shift sleeping or going to sleep in late afternoons.. Elaine hates the schedule and we try to find deals on hotels with a sitting room and a separate bedroom to she can remain normal.  Well, as close to it and being married to me permits…

Publish at 10 AM local time regardless of the time zone.  Benefits:  Sleeping until a regular hour.  Negatives:  When we fly the airplane, the BEST time to fly is from 1-hour before sunrise until about 1 PM in the afternoon.  (6-hours of flying is about 750-800 miles, and that’s a pretty safe number.  Flying more than 6-hours a day with one or two stops gets up into the unsafe area from fatigue.

Publish One Hour Before Market Close:  Benefits: We can be pretty clear on the trajectory of the market for the day.  If not, we can find an animal turd, give it a good throw, and use that as approximation.  Other benefit:  Regular sleep.  Negatives:  The day is not over and I don’t have time to look at closing numbers which are more meaningful once hot money has closed its positions.

Late Afternoon Publishing:  Benefits:  I get a whole days of flying, driving, project working, or whatever.  Elaine and I can sleep uninterrupted.

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(Sedona, AZ)  Very much a “to the point” column this morning as we discuss our “secret mission” of the current road trip.  You didn’t think we would be driving and leaving the airplane home in the hangar without a damn good reason, do you?

Then, Saturday we will focus on the art of “investing” again, versus “trading.”  But this morning’s column is about the “softer side” of how that investing stuff takes place and how to trouble-shoot our own thinking when we start to make bad investment decisions.

So this morning a bit of analysis of investment and trading using a very neat tool called Life Loops.

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(Las Vegas, NV)  Hot off the press this morning:  Consumer Prices up 2-10th’s of a percent for October:

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.2 percent in October on a seasonally adjusted basis, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.

Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 0.2 percent before seasonal adjustment.

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