Bidenomics
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The Consumer Price Index is an economic indicator that can be used to gauge inflation. It is a figure published on a monthly basis by the Bureau of Labor Statistics that measures the price increase of goods and services in the economy. The latest overall CPI reading is 3 percent, the recorded increase from June 2023 to June 2024. The Federal Reserve continues to state that the target goal for inflation is 2 percent. There are to date 41 annual CPI recordings during President Biden's tenure, and only two of those are less than 3 percent, the first two months of his presidency. Of those 41 recordings, 7 are 8 percent or higher; 12 (a calendar year) are 7 percent or higher; 17 are 6 percent or higher; 21 are 5 percent or higher; 26 are 4 percent or higher.
The high inflation occurring in the Biden economy is horrible, as are its consequences. High inflation persists because of failed economic policies. Democrats are currently empowered with more legislative ability than Republicans and have been so empowered (including all legislative ability for two years) since President Joe Biden took office, but they do not attempt to apply working solutions to remedy what is a disaster. They push spending, spending, and more spending. That push continues, despite egregiously high inflation. If high inflation is too much money chasing too few goods and services, it makes sense that cutting spending is a method of inflation reduction.
Democrats push tax increases, despite the effects of high taxes trickling down to all consumers, employees and employers. Tax increases do not reduce inflation. Democrats push for more regulations, despite the economic hinderances caused by an already bloated regulatory environment. More regulations do not reduce inflation.
Fact Check: Lousy Jobs Report Brings Out The Worst In Biden-Harris
Shortly after Friday’s anemic jobs report came out, the stock market tumbled, recession fears rose, and the Biden-Harris administration issued another Pollyannish report about how great the economy is doing – this time with bigger and bolder lies.
Not only did just 114,000 jobs get created in July, which was well below economists’ expectations, but the jobless rate went up for the fourth consecutive month to 4.3% as 352,000 joined the unemployment lines. That’s not exactly “Morning in America.”
It gets worse.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics also admitted that it had overestimated the job gains in both May and June by a total of 29,000. This continues a nearly unbroken and highly suspicious trend that has resulted in the BLS claiming big job gains each month – which garnered great press for Biden-Harris – then quietly cutting those numbers in subsequent months, often by substantial amounts. So far this year, 279,000 have disappeared.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics I&I Chart
It also continues the mysterious gap between the number of new payroll jobs reported each month and the number of people who claim to have gained employment in those same months. While 114,000 jobs were created in July, for example, just 67,000 people said they got jobs.
Over the past three years, this gap has widened considerably.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics. I&I Chart.
Then there’s the fact that during the alleged Biden-Harris jobs boom, the number of unemployed has climbed 1.3 million since last July.
But what really stood out was the Biden-Harris administration’s statement. We decided to fact-check the claims, something the press studiously refuses to do when it comes to this administration, and here’s what we found:
“Since Vice President Harris and I took office, our economy has created nearly 16 million jobs …” — FALSE
As we have pointed out countless times in this space, Biden-Harris are crediting themselves with “creating” jobs that were simply replacing ones lost during the COVID-19 lockdowns. The right way to compare job gains is to compare the current job market to the previous peak. When you do that, you find that there have only been 6.4 million net new jobs created since Biden-Harris took office, which is nothing to brag about.
And as we have also noted, even that number is a wild exaggeration. See “The Unvarnished Truth About That ‘Blockbuster’ Jobs Report.”
“… average unemployment has been lower than during any administration in 50 years …” — GROSSLY MISLEADING
The official unemployment number can be almost completely unreliable if you fail to consider the fact that it counts only those who are actively looking for jobs as unemployed. If you give up looking entirely, you aren’t considered unemployed by the BLS. Normally, this doesn’t make a huge difference, unless there has been a massive increase in the number of labor dropouts.
And that’s exactly what has happened. Today, there are 5 million more people who are “out of the labor force” than there were just before the COVID lockdowns.
If you adjust for that, the unemployment rate has never been below 4% during Biden-Harris’ entire time in the White House. And today, it would be 5.2%.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics. I&I Chart.
“… and incomes have risen faster than prices.” — FALSE
This is just flat-out a lie. So far this year, hourly wages have climbed 1.4%. But the Consumer Price Index has climbed 1.9%. Since Biden-Harris took office, wages increased 16.9%, but that hasn’t been nearly enough to keep up with the 20.1% increase in prices.
Yesterday, C&C reported on what was at first a US-only story, but as markets opened around the globe yesterday, the story went worldwide. The New York Times ran a mendacious article this morning headlined, “Markets Around the World Are Jolted by Fears of Slowing U.S. Growth.” It was, in fact, the top article on the Times’ website, and will probably be the top story today as things get worse. The sub-headline explained, “A rout that began in Asia continued in Europe, and U.S. stocks are set to fall. Japan’s benchmark index logged its worst single-day point decline.”
Somewhere exists a highly secured room filled with rows of desks and oversized terminal displays, with moving wallpaper made of streaming video feeds, where young intelligence analysts snatch Adderall from candy dishes and chase them with Red Bull pulled from mini-fridges below their desks. These are the narrative bakers; they watch world events in real-time and feed carefully crafted headlines to hungry editors, directing what the media says about everything. A crusty, Cold War-era veteran sits at an empty desk in a glass-walled office inset along one wall, chewing nicotine gum and occasionally conferring with youthful narrative spinners on a particularly thorny or difficult lie.
I am convinced this deep-state narrative crafting team must have run out of Adderall after somebody stole their package off the safe house’s front porch. Or maybe the supervisor was out sick after testing positive for covid, and the kids logged onto Minecraft instead of working. Whatever happened, this can’t possibly be their best work.
I say that because the explanation media has offered to explain what started late last week as a -1,000-point Dow Jones selloff (out of 40,000), now a global markets crash, was so unbelievably dumb it could only be the work of the deep-state’s ‘B’ team. Anyway, here’s what the Times suggested:
Got that? The Times wants you to believe the entire jittery world is worried about ‘signs’ of a slowing U.S. economy. Not even an actual slowing economy! Just the signs of one! (At first, it seemed sort of heartwarming. I mean, I didn’t know they cared so much.)
You see what’s happening? The CIA’s narrative spinners are getting stuck. On the one hand, they can’t admit the U.S. economy is actually slowing, because that would hurt the Kamala campaign. Nor can they admit the real reason for global market panic. So they came up with this pathetic ‘fears over signs of a slowing market’ excuse.
Let’s apply a little grey matter. In early trading yesterday, Japan’s Nikkei fell by over twelve percent, which is a whole lot in one day. That was equivalent to a -4,800 point drop in the Dow. The Pan-European Stoxx index fell over -2% in early trading, and every major market in Europe also dropped. South Korea’s benchmark Kospi index was down over -10% before it suspended trading. Equity markets in Taiwan, Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong and even China all closed lower. Stocks in India, which has been one of the best performing markets in Asia this year, traded down over -2%.
But why? What horrible development caused every world market to freak out? According to the official narrative, and I am not making this up, it was a bad U.S. jobs report late last week. The report supposedly showed hiring still happening, but a little slower, and unemployment ticking up to a modest three-year high:
Truly, this is the most insane lie they’ve peddled so far this year, in some ways worse and more insidious than old Chesnuts like “six foot distancing” or 2024’s “we aren’t sure if it was a bullet.”
World markets don’t crash when the U.S. gets a mildly negative jobs report. What a ridiculous idea.
Obviously, as I explained yesterday, the real reason for the panicky world markets was not any Biden Administration Jobs Report. Those Biden economic reports have become about as reliable as a weather forecast from the Mad Hatter, and nobody believes them anyway. No, the real reason for the panicking markets is completely rational: they are panicking because of Israel’s assassinations of two terror leaders last week, combined with the U.S.’s failure to even try to quickly de-escalate the Middle East.
When the markets saw aircraft carriers steaming toward the Red Sea instead of diplomats, they quite reasonably started selling stocks in lots of companies that don’t do well during world wars. Want some evidence for my theory? Here you go.
It wasn’t all bad news in the markets. Not everyone was panicking. Check out defense contracting giant Lockheed Martin (LMT), which jumped up nearly +20% in one week (+30% over its 6-month price):
Hang on, there seems to be a trend! Defense firms are doing great. Raytheon (RTX) posted gains of +21.98% last month. Northrup Grumman (NOC) rose +13.76% in the same period. General Dynamics (GD) is up +3.80% over the last 30 days.
Yesterday I erroneously opined that war was bad for business. That’s only mostly true. It is true, unless your business is war. In that case, war is great for business.
Anyway, the media’s lies over the real reason for market crashes is more proof, if you needed it, that you’re more likely to get the truth from a panhandling crack addict than the corporate media. But knowing the truth, do not panic. If you’re ‘in the market,’ hang in there and buy the dip. If you’re not in the market, don’t worry about it.
The reason I point all this out is because when the Middle East cools back down, the markets will recover. It’s not anywhere near as complicated as the media claims.
☕️ BOILING OVER ☙ Monday, August 5, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠
World markets crash and media doubles down on lies; media buries Middle East war; neocons in Israel; Supreme writes great book; British protests over 2-tiered justice; anti-vaxxer gets the gold; more.
www.coffeeandcovid.com
Biden-Harris reckless spending flooded economy with paper money, created artificial industries bubble
Former Trump Deputy National Security Adviser Victoria Coates downloads on an impending Middle East war as many hold their breathe waiting for Iran’s retaliatory response to Israel and discusses the foreign market performance woes, saying that “instead of being the world's engine, which is historically the United States’s role, we are starting to become a drag on the world economy.” Coates says, “the Biden, Harris camp keeps talking about how great [the economy] is, and that they have all these jobs. But they're reckless spending, to the tune of trillions and trillions of dollars has put an intolerable strain on our economy flooded it with all of this paper money, you know, and it's creating these kinds of, of artificial bubbles for industries that quite frankly, nobody wants, like electric vehicles. And so what we wind up with is, instead of being the world's engine, which is historically the United States is role, we are starting to become a drag on the world economy. And we're seeing out close allies like Japan, suffer it badly in their markets. And so China, of course, has had, and they have problems of their own, which we should be making worse, but instead, they're seeing us bogging ourselves down. So it really is national security issue.” Additional interview with former Illinois Gubernatorial candidate Gary Rabine on his ‘Parading for Trump Rally’.