1) HELLO!! Inflation Is NOT Trending Down to 2% Target
Who are you gonna believe? Joe Biden, or us?
We’ve been saying since the start of the year that all the happy talk of Bidenflation receding was a lot of bunk.
As we’ve been warning week after week: with gold prices up to $2,300 an ounce, commodities up 15%, gas back at $3.50 a gallon, and more global supply chain problems (can we please exterminate the pirates?), we were predicting inflation trending to 4 to 5% not down to 2%.
How did Wall Street get so hoodwinked with such irrational exuberance?
Even the media is in on the conspiracy: nearly every headline announced year-over-year inflation of 3.5%. But for the first three months of 2024, both core and overall inflation were running at an annual rate of 4.6%.
Biden yesterday said he still expects the Fed to cut rates, in what is either delusional or an attempt to bully the Fed. But futures markets dropped the chance of a rate cut in June yesterday from 57% to 19%. There is NO CASE for a rate cut now.
2) Lie of the Day: Biden Inherited Inflation from Trump
That was Biden’s explanation for the lousy inflation numbers. It’s only slightly less laughable than his line that Conservatives are responsible for the border crisis.
We want to remind readers that when Trump left office the inflation rate was 1.6%. Eighteen months later we hit 9.1%.
This chart shows how preposterous the Biden claim is. Warning: These stats come from the Republican National Committee, so we can’t vouch for their exact accuracy, but we do know these numbers are in the ballpark.
Our friend Tom Del Becarro has a good explanation for the persistent Bidenflation:
“Rather than stop the trillion dollar spree after COVID receded, the federal government has continued to run trillions in deficits at the same time it is restraining output through higher regulations. As a result, the money supply is still growing faster than output AND regulations are increasing the costs of energy, jobs, and other goods and services. That is why we have inflation”
3) Inflation Acceleration Act Price Tag Keeps Growing and Growing and Growing
Remember when Biden said that his latest $1 trillion spending bill was going to reduce inflation? That was only half the lie in that porker bill. The other piece of disinformation was that this would reduce the deficit. In reality cost estimate of the green energy subsidy "tax expenditures" from Biden's own Treasury Department keeps rising:
The 10-year total is now north of $700 billion, more than double the original "Inflation Reduction Act" estimates and climbing fast. Private-sector estimates are well north of a trillion bucks.
We remind you that the "Center for a Responsible Federal Budget" endorsed this bill for its alleged deficit reduction.
4) Biden’s Natural Gas Export Ban Could Hurt Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is joining a chorus of liberal voices, sounding alarm bells on President Biden’s "temporary" ban on new Liquid Natural Gas exports.
“For whatever reasons that the administration put the pause in place I hope that it is very rapid,” says Gov. Shapiro. “This is critically important to our state.”
Shapiro isn’t alone. Pennsylvania’s two senators, John Fetterman and Bob Casey, are warning they will push for a Biden reversal if it doesn’t end soon. Pennsylvania is a state that has greatly benefited from drilling natural gas out of the vast Marcellus Shale. These are tens of thousands of high-paying mostly union jobs being put at risk in PA.
Shapiro says it is “a false choice” to believe policymakers must choose between jobs and protecting the planet. “We can do both,” he says.
Except, the Biden administration climate change fanatics care much more about “green” jobs than blue-collar jobs. If blue-collar Americans in PA have to lose their livelihoods as sacrifices to the god of climate change, that’s a price that the kids in the White House and the Ivy League faculty Lounges are willing to pay. These are real humanitarians.
This may also explain why blue collar voters in PA are strongly trending toward Trump:
Progressives used to boast that they were on the cutting edge of the economy’s digital-age revolution. Except in “Woke” Minneapolis - the city that spurred the “Defund the Police” movement in 2020 - wants minimum wage laws for drivers that are so high that Lyft is set to pull out on May 1. Over one million passengers a month (including many seniors and commuters) will be hurt. Not to mention the thousands of drivers who will lose their jobs. (Does raising the minimum wage EVER work?)
So to prepare for the Lyft departure, the radical City Council is proposing to spend $150,000 in tax dollars to seed brand-new transportation startups. Sure. That will work like a charm.
If the City Council doesn’t back down the entire Twin City’s transportation system is going to break down. Uber and Lyft have been so successful that there are only 39 licensed cab drivers in all of Minneapolis now.
