It looks like the US government isn't the only country that selectively uses measuring sticks for inflation that understates what consumers are really paying. In 81 the US government changed the method of figuring inflation so the official number would be artificially lower than what the inflation rate actually is (see shadowstats.com ).

Here is an interesting article of the same thing happening in China and potential world wide results. If this is the case, inflation is already started, as I believe it has. Housing, commercial real estate, maybe some other major areas of the economy lower prices, in my opinion most everything else we actually need to buy, prices going up.

John