If you find yourself confused about the inflation and/or deflation problems facing our nation, I guarantee you are not alone. In fact, when we watch the financial news stations, everyone has a different opinion of what is going on and what will happen in the future. And to top it off, everyone disagrees about how much each type of inflation, stagflation, deflation, deflation, deflation, and to what degree each will or can occur. That’s enough to get someone to drink.

So let’s break down some of these terms, not that you’ll understand them any better once I explain them to you, but it’s a fun exercise for all you armchair economists pondering about our glocal economy.

• inflation
• Deflation
• deflation
• Inflation
• stagflation

So what is deflation? Well, it is defined as the deceleration of deflation, or in other words, the deceleration of the biggest push of deflationary trends. What do you ask? Exactly, and that is exactly the problem. So when the deceleration of a deflationary trend moves back down the speed scale toward zero, it’s disinflation, and when it crosses that zero line, it moves toward a mild inflationary stance, which is where we really want to be.

Deflation is a reversal of inflation, but it has not yet reached deflation by reversing. Stagflation is what we had in the late ’80s and early ’90s, which nobody cares to remember, it wasn’t that much fun. Most importantly, you should know that disinflation will be talked about more and more as a positive sign, until we get to the ever-dreaded inflation, at which point all the economists and retirees start freaking out.

So, I hope this article helps you understand all of this, but if it didn’t, don’t worry, no one else will, not even the economists who apparently lead our nation. Please consider all of this.