The people behind Joe Biden know the President has a political problem when it comes to the U.S. economy.
Americans are painfully aware of the rampant price inflation. Small businesses which survived the COVID era lockdowns are still struggling. And despite a string of rosier-than-expected jobs reports, overall employment is still below 2019 levels.
As the nation heads into a Presidential election year, Americans are going to be flooded with terrible takes on the economy. Some of these takes will be deliberate lies.
Others can be attributed to basic economic illiteracy.
The nonsense has already begun. Biden posted the following statement on X (formerly Twitter) November 30th:
“Let me be clear to any corporation that hasn’t brought their prices back down even as inflation has come down: It’s time to stop the price gouging.
Give American consumers a break.”
The President wants Americans to believe the only thing keeping prices higher now are greedy corporations who are “gouging” consumers. There is even an implied threat of government enforcers showing up to punish businesses who won’t voluntarily lower prices.
It is impossible to say whether the President (or whomever is running his social media) is being moronic or dishonest. Both are, unfortunately, equally plausible.
The meme below pretty well sums up the absurdity in the President’s tweet.
Prices are still rising, just as they have over the vast majority of the past century. Companies cannot bring their prices “back down” as Joe Biden demands while their costs are still going up – at least not if they wish to remain in business!
The official inflation statistics show prices rising at a slower rate than a year or two ago, but that’s about it.
At no time has the CPI turned negative. And, as many goldbugs know, the bureaucrats behind the CPI also shouldn’t be trusted.
It was encouraging to see X users respond to Biden’s tweet by pointing out prices are still rising in the attached Community Notes.
To be fair, the blame for price inflation and the rot in the U.S. economy needs to be shared liberally around Washington DC and with the Federal Reserve. Biden is not solely responsible, as many Republicans who are running for office will ask you to believe.
It is also fair to say Biden has contributed to the inflation problem by pushing the federal budget deficit above $2 trillion annually.
The main thing for investors is to inoculate themselves against the sort of economic misinformation they can expect from politicians and the corporate media as we move closer to the election next fall.
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