Two firms advertised that they were selling a new copy of a particular book through Amazon. Each firm instructed Amazon to offer the book as a function of the other's price -- one at a 2% less than the other, the other at a 27% markup. This led to a bidding war as each firm's price rose until the book was valued at nearly $24 MILLION by both firms. Someone finally noticed and brought the book's price back down to around $100.
Now this oughtn't impact measured GDP? Nothing new has been produced and nothing was sold... but someone had in inventory a book they listed as being worth $24 million, up 240,000%. An outlier of that magnitude would easily impact a calculation on the average change in book prices in the new, more technologically savvy way being proposed by some economists.
Clearly QE2 has caused book prices to spiral out of control. Monetary policy needs to be seized by Congress NOW before book prices go any higher. /sarc
Oh dear.
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