President Biden’s Moment In The Sun Marred by Reality
[guest post by Dana]
If I keep saying it over and over and over, eventually people will believe it seems to be the plan when it comes to President Biden and inflation as he celebrated the Inflation Reduction Act yesterday:
President Joe Biden celebrated his climate change and drug pricing law, The Inflation Reduction Act, on Tuesday on the White House lawn, highlighting Democrats’ commitment to progressive priorities even as high consumer prices continue to bite.
Biden signed the $430 billion bill, seen as the biggest climate change package in U.S. history, into law last month in a low-key ceremony…
Biden said the law was one of the most significant in U.S. history. “Today offers proof that the soul of America is vibrant. The future of America is bright and the promise of America is real,” he told the crowd.
Unfortunately for the President, reality marred his special moment in the sun:
But the crowd on the sun-baked South Lawn of the White House cheered the controversially named Inflation Reduction Act only hours after punishing new government data showing food prices soaring. Stocks were meanwhile plummeting in the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s largest one-day reverse since June 2020 in the darkest days of the pandemic.
The slump came on the back of new figures that showed inflation still a corrosive force in August, despite big falls in gasoline prices. All this probably means more aggressive action from the Federal Reserve next week to curb inflation amid fears the central bank’s harsh medicine could throw the economy into recession and cool a strong job market.
I don’t know about you, but where I live, gas prices hover around $5.50 per gallon (down from over $6 per gallon), a dozen eggs about $3.50, and a 1 bd/1 bath apartment typically rents around a minimum of $1,900 per month. And while you may not be taking a direct hit on your wallet, I bet that most people, no matter where they live in the country, can point to higher prices across the board.
With that, I’ll point you to Charles C.W. Cooke’s clever take on the wishful thinking of President Biden:
Mere hours after learning that the inflation rate remained at its highest level since the late 1970s, President Biden put the finishing touches on his plans for a victory rally. The honoree of the rally: his party’s magnificently misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, which, he said, was poised to reduce costs “at the kitchen table.” Chutzpah, thy name is Joseph.
“If you think it,” say the mystics, “it will happen.” Evidently, President Biden cannot be bothered to wait for the happening part.
[…]
The scale of Biden’s effrontery is tough to comprehend. It is as if, after receiving the latest dispatch from the Light Brigade, Lord Palmerston had organized a celebration of military charges, or, on the day the country learned of the infamous 18-minute gap in the Watergate tapes, President Nixon had seen fit to stage a televised clambake in honor of Data Integrity. To adapt an overused phrase, one must suspect in this case that the brazenness is the point. This afternoon’s speech was a showing-off, a provocation, a finger-in-the-eye. The president is irked and bored by the persistence of inflation in the economy, and, with the midterms looming, he wants it off his plate. And so, with an unbecoming impatience, he decided to smash the plate.
Heck, not even Big Media media was able to ignore reality. And that’s saying something:
–Dana
Hello.
Dana (1225fc) — 9/14/2022 @ 11:41 amIf you look at the seasonally adjusted changes from the preceding months, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm, you’ll note that there has been effectively zero increase in the CPI in July and August. The 8.3 number is still including large scale inflation that happened in spring, because it’s an annual number — but *at current rate of change* prices have stopped going up and the annual number will decrease over time as long as we maintain the current raet of change.
Also significant is that energy prices, which skyrocketed in March, May, and June, are actively falling now, which should cause the price of transporting goods to stabilize, as well.
aphrael (4c4719) — 9/14/2022 @ 12:14 pmI don’t know about you, but where I live, gas prices hover around $5.50 per gallon (down from over $6 per gallon), a dozen eggs about $3.50…
Went shopping Monday. Gas is still at $6/gallon at the closest station to the house here around SD– you can drive across town and find it between $5.75 and $6– but it’s still higher than in Trump times; Ralph’s lasagna: $14.00/pan– if you can find it; supply chain issues; was $9.99 six weeks ago; beef and poultry remain quite high as well- so buyers are balking; chili- $2/can; saltine crackers up 75% from $1 to $1.75; spaghetti-0 up 50% package; sauce, up 25%; margarine has nearly doubled in price since mid-July; butter hovers at $5/lb., — Ralph’s coffee- $9/can– was $5.99 in early July. Even ice cream and frozen french fries are up 25% or more since early August. Lettuce is $2/head; fresh veggies are soaring- 10 lb bag of potatoes was $3 in July- $5 now… And supply chain issues remain a problem- baby formula shelf spaces soda deliveries incomplete… cheese, $9/ 32 oz. bar. Cream cheese, once $1- now $2/package. And eggs?? Forget it- $4.99/doz. Even at the Dollar Store- nothing is a dollar anymore. And electricity, water rates, cable TV– credit card interest rates– all climbing. But if you’ve got a government job like Joe, who cares— lkike blowing $200,000 flying to Delaware to vote when he could have voted absentee weeks ago using a 55 cent stamp.
And now a train strike looms to hurt consumers even more on all fronts, for Amtrak Joe. But according to Squinty, the stock market doesn’t necessarily reflect the state of the economy- which would be news to Bush and Obama in 2008, Reagan in 1987, Hoover in ’29; FDR in ’33 and all Americans who lived through the stock market crash and the Great Depression– like Squinty’s daddy: Joe Biden, Sr.
DCSCA (68ffb4) — 9/14/2022 @ 12:35 pmAlso significant is that energy prices, which skyrocketed in March, May, and June, are actively falling now, which should cause the price of transporting goods to stabilize, as well.
Not in the real world.
DCSCA (68ffb4) — 9/14/2022 @ 12:36 pmreaders of Big Media were probably surprised to learn that Biden is president
but it’s all still Putin’s fault anyway
JF (6ed133) — 9/14/2022 @ 12:43 pm$430 billion in more government spending is inflation reduction the way castration is gender-affirming therapy. (And, yeah, I wanna start something! You wanna start something?) But that’s the doubletalk that every politician must be proficient at.
nk (862c54) — 9/14/2022 @ 1:05 pmAmtrak cancels all long-distance trains ahead of potential railway strike
Amtrak canceled all of its long-distance routes starting Thursday in response to a potential railroad workers strike. It’s the latest disruption stemming from the looming labor strike that could start as soon as Friday, which would lead to a shutdown of most of the country’s railway system. It would be the first U.S. railway strike in nearly three decades. – 9/14/22, Axios.com
Lest you forget union-man-Amtrak-Joe-blowing-smoke:
Biden celebrates and prepares to expand Amtrak despite decades of cost overruns and bad service
Taxpayers shelled out $81 billion for Amtrak between 1971 and 2017; Biden wants to spend $80 billion more.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-expand-amtrak-decades-of-cost-overruns
Amtrak Joe hits the buffers: President’s story about conductor congratulating him for traveling 1.5m miles had RETIRED 20 years earlier – and his mother who he ‘was visiting’ was already dead
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9548261/Bidens-bizarre-story-hitting-1-5million-miles-Amtrak-unravels.html
DCSCA (68ffb4) — 9/14/2022 @ 1:13 pmHere in the real world, gas prices have fallen $2 from their peak (they were at $7 at the cheapest place in june, they’re back down to $5 at the same place).
This isn’t necessarily going to cause the price of transported goods to *fall* but it should cause the prices to *stop rising* — which is what the headline number is saying: prices rose really quickly late last year and the first half of this year, but they stopped rising and stabilized over the summer. They’re not falling back to where they were — they probably won’t and honestly deflation is far, far more destructive to the economy — but the increase has stopped and prices have stabilized.
We just don’t see it yet in the YoY statistics because those statistics are covering the entire year and so are bad at capturing changes in the velocity of prices mid-year.
aphrael (d9db76) — 9/14/2022 @ 2:27 pm> supply chain issues remain a problem
yes, and they’re going to. there’s still a huge backlog of ships waiting to unload in long beach and oakland, for example, and there are going to be *massive* supply chain disruptions this winter as europeans are forced to choose between energy for factories and energy for keeping grandma from freezing to death.
it’s really not clear what to do about this year’s european factory disruption unless the west just capitulates to Putin’s invasion.
aphrael (d9db76) — 9/14/2022 @ 2:29 pmThis false claiming of successful public policy at the slightest basis is not unusual.
For both parties in fact.
Another thing the Biden Administration claimed was getting schools re-opened when he delayed it.
It’s all post hoc ergo propter hoc. Sometimes without the post hoc.
Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 9/14/2022 @ 2:43 pmAnd what about the time Biden lied and claimed to have caused the firing of the Ukrainian prosecuter?
Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 9/14/2022 @ 2:44 pmhttps://www.cfr.org/event/foreign-affairs-issue-launch-former-vice-president-joe-biden
Everything tells me that this story about the cancelled press conference was just made up by Joe Biden.
But it prove useful later to Vladimir Putin.
There was a somewhat different version of this published online with the August 2016 issue of the Atlantic. That one had a flabbergasted U.S. Ambassador but also the vice president with superpowers..
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/08/joe-biden-interview/497633
Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 9/15/2022 @ 1:28 pm