Fooled ya

Why do the people in power think we are fools?

Over the past 18 months, they’ve tried to play switcheroo and pretend that inflation wasn’t their fault.  And now they claim the economy is not in a recession.

They see a fool in the mirror every morning, so they suppose we must be fools too.

Let’s start with inflation.

When the price of everything rises, it’s always due to one reason: there’s too much money. The fancy way of saying this is “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.”

A year-and-a-half ago, we warned them.  We warned them repeatedly. We said spending more money in a surging economy would cause inflation.

The New York Times even took time out of its busy day to laugh at us in a March 2021 article ‘Biden Presses Economic Aid Plan, Rejecting Inflation Fears’:

“With a $1.9 trillion economic aid package on the brink of passing Congress and the pace of vaccinations picking up, some economists, Republican lawmakers and Wall Street traders are increasingly raising a counterintuitive concern: that the economy, still emerging from its precipitous pandemic-induced drop, could be on a path toward overheating.”

Oh sweet vindication!

But we’re playing for national prosperity, not bragging rights at the loser’s table of higher gas prices and a lower standard of living.

Since then, we’ve heard every sort of excuse.

“It’s transitory.”

“It’s Putin’s fault.”

“It’s the supply chain.”

But let’s face it, we were right.  We were right and they were wrong.  (That’s why we’re called “The Right” by the way.)

Overspending led to rising prices.

The liberal owner of the Washington Post even tried to gently correct them on Twitter:

Jeff Bezos@JeffBezos

Ouch. Inflation is far too important a problem for the White House to keep making statements like this. It’s either straight ahead misdirection or a deep misunderstanding of basic market dynamics.

President Biden @POTUS

My message to the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump is simple: this is a time of war and global peril. Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you’re paying for the product. And do it now.

1:42 AM · Jul 3, 2022

33K Reposts · 195K Likes

Only to have the White House try to deflect yet again from their own incompetence:

Jeff Bezos@JeffBezos

Look, a squirrel! This is the White House’s statement about my recent tweets. They understandably want to muddy the topic. They know inflation hurts the neediest the most. But unions aren’t causing inflation and neither are wealthy people. Remember the Administration tried…

4:33 PM · May 16, 2022

8.29K Reposts · 64.2K Likes

Or take the latest foolishness with the recession.

For the past two decades, a recession has been when the economy shrinks two quarters in a row.

That’s what it says under definition of ‘recession’ on Wikipedia today.  (It’s also what Wikipedia said in 2017, 2012, 2007 and 2002; news stories to the contrary are wrong, fyi.)

Now, the big revelation in 2022 is this White House says it’s no longer true.

Here’s White House economic advisor Brian Deese in 2022 contradicting himself from 2008:

And the liberal columnist Paul Krugman now refers to it as “two quarter crazies”:

Paul Krugman@paulkrugman

So, leaving the 2-quarter crazies aside, I have a real question about the economic debate. Take it as given that large fiscal stimulus and Fed complacency allowed the U.S. economy to get overheated 1/

8:50 PM · Jul 29, 2022

159 Reposts · 694 Likes

When in fact his MasterClass, available for $180/ year online, right now, cites the two quarter definition as the most common one. 

The second most common?

Six months.

Crazy train, indeed!

So they’re trying to tell us not to believe what they told us yesterday.

It seems like a dumb ploy out of the pages of Animal Farm.

It’s so transparently manipulative, so obviously being done for crass political motives, that it makes you wonder:

Who do they think they’re fooling? Us? Themselves?

People have made their own assessments, based on what they are experiencing in their own lives.  And people’s expectations for how the economy will be doing in six months have dropped to the lowest levels since the Great Recession:

This type of communications dishonesty from the White House won’t work and only increases the amount that people feel those in power aren’t truthful or trustworthy.

So on one hand, we should be glad for that.  When foolish people in power lose credibility due to their own negligence, that’s democracy in action.

But on the other hand, the longer the managers of the government have their head in the sand about the problems they’ve created, the longer it will take them to stop breaking things.

And if their solution to our present challenge is to deflect blame onto Putin or corporate greed or gas stations, that’s not going to help.  Especially if they keep pursuing the same harmful policies from the past 18 months, things will continue to get worse.

It would be much better to avoid distractions like blaming gas station owners for high gas prices, or getting caught playing silly word games that make them look foolish.

Acknowledging that the extraordinary solutions to the pandemic have led to inflation and recession while also delivering a very strong employment market and higher corporate revenues and profitability would be a better approach.  And then explaining how those strengths can be used to overcome the setbacks.

What’s not productive is this undisciplined blame game and childish criticism of anybody who realistically points out our problems.  (But just you watch - we’ll see the same attack-the-messenger behavior in the comments on this post).

I’m afraid our only true chance to fix things will be at the ballot box this fall.