Memories, Oh, Memories! We suddenly flashed back to the famous remark of Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman when we heard President Biden’s answer to a reporter who asked whether the President was worried about the latest inflation numbers. Young Mr. Neuman would have replied: “Who, me worry? Instead, Joe Biden simply replied, “No, I am not.”
The President may be one of the only persons not concerned by the facts that grocery prices rose 0.7 percent in August, rent rose 0.7 percent, electricity rose 1.5 percent, and natural gas prices rose 3.5 percent. The median CPI, which excludes all the large changes in either direction, was 9.2% (annual rate), the single highest monthly number since 1983!
Former President Barack Obama economic adviser Jason Furman, described the numbers as “extremely ugly,” and Larry Summers, also a former adviser to former President Obama said the United States had “a serious inflation problem.” Stock market investors couldn’t have been too happy, for the Dow Jones industrial average plunged 1,276 points on Tuesday in reaction to the latest inflation numbers.
Maybe the reason for the President’s nonchalance is that he believes inflation isn’t his fault. In that case, instead of having James Taylor singing “Fire and Ice” at the White House gala celebrating the passage of his Inflation Reduction Act, perhaps he should have asked Bob Dylan to sing “It Ain’t Me, Babe.” After all, the President has in the past blamed inflation on Covid, Putin, Trump, Oil and Gas companies, corporate greed, meat companies, and even the economy itself, claiming that surging inflation is the natural result of the economy rebounding from the pandemic.
We respectfully disagree. The President’s food and energy policies, and his spending policies bear much of the blame, but more of that later!
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