Just as Peter predicted on Wednesday after the monthly inflation report came out, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris almost immediately went into self-congratulatory mode to brag about how great they are at managing the economy.
As President Biden told a gathering of reporters on Wednesday, “I said we’re gonna have a soft landing. We’re gonna have a soft landing. My policies are working.” He then commanded them to “start writing that way”, and we have no doubt their lackeys in the media will dutifully comply.
Not that it matters. It’s clear that neither the people making the decisions, nor the “experts” advising them, nor the journalists covering them, seem to have any real fundamental grasp of the economy.
Peter wrote on Wednesday that, while the monthly inflation report was cheered for posting a 2.9% annualized rate, the details of the report showed a much different picture.
On a monthly basis, inflation is accelerating. Plus, if you strip out the temporary phenomenon of falling used car prices, the actual rate of inflation is closer to 5%.
Then yesterday, the retail sales report came out… and once again the experts cheered: the consumer is still strong! The soft landing is in sight!
Of course, this euphoria was equally misguided. The retail sales report showed that consumer spending is up 2.7% over the past twelve months. Sound fine… except the report explicitly states that they do not adjust the numbers for inflation.
So, wait a minute– if consumers are spending 2.7% more over the past twelve months, but inflation is up 2.9% over the same period, then, after adjusting for inflation, consumers are actually spending LESS.
This is not a sign of a healthy consumer economy. And data from corporate earnings back this up: everyone from McDonalds to Mercedes-Benz to Deere and even Apple have reported trouble… either slowing growth, or even outright sales declines.
Walmart reported strong growth… and the experts viewed this as yet more proof that the consumer is strong. But they’re missing the obvious: Walmart is the bottom of the retail ladder. So, the fact that more people are shopping at Walmart is a sign that consumers are struggling, i.e. willing to trade down to lower quality products to save money.
But, still, the headlines are all positive… and incredibly supportive of both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
This is nothing new, of course. Especially for Kamala. Ever since she stole the nomination, the fawning press coverage at both the national and local level has been nauseating.
Upon visiting the swing state of Arizona, a local paper ran a story entitled “Kamala Harris went to this Mexican restaurant. Where else should she have dined?”
Wow. Such hard-hitting journalism.
Not to be outdone, CNN ran its own Pulitzer-worthy piece, “Kamala Harris joined TikTok. See her first post”.
I’m reminded of Joe Biden’s basement campaign in 2020 in which the toughest question he ever faced was “what flavor of ice cream” did he like best.
The media is perfectly happy to go the rest of the campaign without asking Kamala a single tough question. And they’re now trying to build her up as some kind of economic savant.
Case in point, today she plans on taking this newly conjured reputation for a test drive when she unveils a bunch of idiotic ideas that are supposed to pass for an economic platform.
Her signature piece is to “call for 3 million new housing units” targeted at low income and first-time home buyers. And the media is already orgasmic in its coverage.
These people seem to think Kamala has the ability to conjure new houses out of thin air, or to order them into existence, as if she’s ordering a pizza. It’s ludicrous.
Just look at Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s track record. This guy was given $7.5 billion to build 500,000 electric charging stations across the country. He built eight. I think my cat could have done a better job than that, and probably still had plenty of money left over at the end.
Or just look at how much money the City of San Francisco, or the State of California, spend on the homeless: $24 billion over five years, which works out to $28,000 per homeless person per year. And they haven’t even come close to solving the problem.
So, I can only imagine how much money will be spent per house that Kamala dials up. The US government’s low-income starter homes will probably end up being the most expensive real estate in the world on a per square foot basis.
Not to completely ignore the private sector, Kamala also wants to create new tax incentives which will make it more attractive for real estate developers to build new low-income homes.
This is extraordinary. It’s almost as if she finally realized that lower taxes stimulate economic activity… and higher taxes reduce economic activity!
Yet bizarrely, a second major focus of Kamala’s economic platform is to raise taxes on businesses and successful individuals.
Hello, irony? This is Kamala. Seriously, lady, if low taxes are a good idea to boost production in the real estate sector, then why the hell aren’t low taxes a good idea for, you know, the rest of the economy?!?!
But the lunacy doesn’t stop there… because the other signature piece of her new economic policy is to tackle the true root cause of inflation.
And if you’re thinking “outrageous government spending” or “Fed money printing”, then you’re wrong. The true root cause of inflation, according to these people, is corporate greed.
So, Kamala plans on… I don’t even know… banning greed? She’s going to “monitor” corporations and somehow prevent price increases. No one understands what this possibly means, least of all Kamala. But again, the press is already running with it, and experts are acclaiming that it will bring down the debt, end inflation, create jobs, and pretty much every rosy scenario imaginable.
I used to think it would be really hard for someone to be more idiotic and destructive than Joe Biden. Based on details now emerging, it’s clear I was wrong.
