<mediadc-video-embed data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1654035224200,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"00000162-07b6-de22-a173-2ffe05de0001","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1654035224200,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"00000162-07b6-de22-a173-2ffe05de0001","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"rawHtml":"
var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ "div": "Brid_54032183", "obj": {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"1023194"} }); ","_id":"00000181-1c2e-db34-a5d5-9ebe82f20000","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video EmbedIn a Wall Street Journal op-ed yesterday, President Joe Biden pledged to detail his “plan” to combat the worst inflation since the Carter era. Instead, Biden spent most of his word allotment deflecting blame and explaining away America’s economic woes.
In short, Biden’s plan to ease the inflation that is costing the average earner more than two of 26 paychecks per year — is that he has no plan. This is evinced not just by his comically sophomoric list of solutions but more tellingly by the evasions he utilizes in order to hide his own culpability.
It’s embarrassing enough that one-third of Biden’s solution is to let the Federal Reserve continue the garbage job it has done thus far, letting inflation hit 8% before even bothering to raise the federal funds rate to single digits. But worse are Biden’s false claims that surely would have been recognized as outright lies in the era of former President Donald Trump.
Beyond the canard of blaming Russia and supply chain shocks for the purely monetary crisis of inflation, Biden claims that people have “increased their savings and have less debt.” Really? All available evidence indicates that inflation has cost the average person whatever savings he or she reaped from the federal government’s pandemic payout bonanza. The personal savings rate as determined by the Department of Commerce has plunged to 4.4% — the lowest level since the Great Recession. Average personal savings have fallen from $73,000 in 2021 to $62,000 now, a 15% drop since Biden has taken office. It is therefore difficult to determine in what sense, if any, Biden’s statement about savings could be true.
The same story is true of debt. And housing, the only market for which Biden has a real plan to boost supply, doesn’t explain the increase in personal debt. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that housing debt has risen from $10.39 trillion by the end of 2020 to $11.5 trillion this quarter. Nonhousing debt has risen from $4.17 trillion to $4.35 trillion in that time.
To his credit, Biden acknowledges the immense inflationary potential of our disastrous national debt. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget noted in a recent report that we will be spending more than $1 trillion, or 3% of our annual economic output, on interest costs alone within a decade under existing law. What Biden will not mention under any circumstances is how he helped cause both the inflation and the debt problem.
Liberal economists such as Larry Summers specifically warned that Biden’s $1.9 trillion bill would spur inflation. And it did.
Biden’s inability to admit why we’re in this crisis explains his inability to provide an actual solution. Instead, he spends an entire Wall Street Journal op-ed attempting to sugarcoat the worst economy in nearly half a century.
