Senator Joe Manchin: Quit the 'Putin price hike' blame-shifting on inflation already
[HOT AIR] It’s not the first time that Joe Manchin has gotten crosswise with the White House on messaging, but it might be the most dramatic example yet. The Biden team started off their record-inflation day by helpfully reminding everyone that criticism of Joe Biden amounted to lèse majesté, and maybe even treason:
It’s been a long, strange trip from "dissent is patriotic" and "the resistance" on the Left to "criticizing our Dear Leader is treasonous," eh? The criticism in this case is well earned, especially for the gaslighting attempts to claim that inflation only became a problem when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. As the above chart shows, annualized inflation went above the 2% target used by the Federal Reserve immediately after the passage of Biden’s bloated American Rescue Act in March 2021, and with the exception of a short pause in the late spring has been accelerating ever since.
No lesser figure than Barack Obama’s lead economic adviser made the same point in much more granularity. Jason Furman’s Twitter thread pointed out some reasons for limited optimism, but also emphasized that inflation in the US has not just been accelerating for a year, but that it’s outpaced EU inflation to boot:
Posted by: Besoeker 2022-04-13 |