BUCKLE UP

Where did the two percent number for acceptable inflation come from that central banks around the globe are so fixated on? It's a fair question. But a fair answer is who knows and who cares. Yet the significance of it goes beyond that.

Take a look at Japan's recent numbers. Unemployment is at record lows, the BOJ has tossed enough QE at the problem to make every economist dyed in the dismal science of Keynesianism smile and still no whiff of inflation. Besides that consumers are still mostly a no show.

In truth, it just a lab number. One of the first things one learns in medicine--or should've learned--is never base your diagnosis solely on a lab number. All the data central banks around the globe collect are just lab numbers.

By the time that stuff get crunched, masticated and digested, the patient could be either thriving or DOA. In medicine there a term spontaneous remission. It's code for we don't know what the hell happened and we can't explain it.

In economics it's called data revision. The spontaneous remission is unexpected; that's the difference between the two. Anybody who doubts there will be data revisions that birth more data revisions forgot to take their medicine this morning.

In medicine there's a Hippocratic oath about not harming the patient. If you can't help him, for God's sake, don't harm him.

It reminds of the story about the preacher walking out in the woods one day, contemplating his next sermon, when he's confronted by a huge, angry, grunting bear. After a brief chase the bear trees him as both struggle to climb higher and higher, the bear right behind him, finally getting as far as they can go.

The bear's weight prevents it from quite reaching the preacher, so the bear stretches out one of his huge paws, trying to get just a little bit higher, his giant talons barely scraping the bottom of the preacher's breeches, but not enough to get a firm grip.

At this point, casting his eyes toward the heavens, the preachers does the only thing he can, the only thing he knows: "Lord, if you can't help me, please don't you help that bear!"

And that, fair readers, pretty much explains where we are with the Fed and its cohorts at other central banks. They can't help us.They know not what they're doing. But they can sure as hell hurt us. And like that preacher, you're on your own.

So get in, buckle up and get use to to it.