Underreported consumer price inflation came at a new over 40-year high this past week as the US government's Bureau of Labor and Statistics admitted to a 9.1% loss in the fiat Federal Reserve notes or fiat US dollars year purchasing power.

Of course, the US government's statistics department has the motive to underreport price inflation constantly and seemingly forever more since the Federal Government makes payments to Social Security, pensions, and many other unfunded liabilities owed accordingly growing to the official inflation rate.

There are only a few developed economies in the world with worse price inflation than the United States is currently suffering.

Hide the Pain Harold inflation meme got an update. Unfortunately, his tiny raise at work won't come close to covering his loss in living standard. At the very least, he got tons of likes on Twitter.

Hopefully, Harold does not investigate the inflationary rip-off further, for if and when he finds out that real price inflation is more likely in the middle teens at the moment, it may be difficult to distract his ongoing pain with social media memes mocking the insanity of our fiat financialized world.

One thing you can take away from this week's SD Bullion Market Update is a simple mathematical formula you can use to understand how badly inflation ruins people's purchasing power. The RULE of 72 is simple to use. Simply divide 72 by the inflation rate to determine how quickly your power halves or loses 50% in real terms.

For instance, if we continue this 9.1% CPI official inflation rate, we'll halve our collective fiat US dollar purchasing power by half within eight years. Before this time of the year in 2030, whatever your income is, it buys half what it does today in summer 2022.