Those poor millennial women, riding around in cars with Honk for Biden stickers. They voted for Biden “decency and normalcy” over a strong economy (Brookings reports Biden got 60% of their vote) and all they got were higher prices in Atlanta, closed schools in Detroit, gas lines in Princeton, and no homes to buy in Phoenix. Now they know money makes the world go around and “nice guys” flop.
Obama was the worst economic manager in the history of the presidency, so Biden should know better than to repeat mistakes from the past. The root problems of Obama’s recession were a ”banking crisis” that slowed business investment and a “housing crisis” that created house-poor Americans. No big secret, but Obama bet the “multiplier effect” of his American Recovery and Reinvestment Act would re-ignite manufacturing and hiring. Oops!
By 2009, US manufacturing was in China and Mexico, so the $787 billion bought sofas and flatscreen TVs made in foreign factories by foreign workers. Bottom line: US factories did not reinvest, US jobs did not recover, and millions lost their homes. Fast forward to 2021: Biden inherited 6.4% GDP growth rate (Q1), and Trump-stimulus money was already chasing too few goods (inflation). The situation begged for a steady hand on the economic throttle.
Instead, Americans got Jittery Joe, whose $1.9 trillion stimulus is driving up prices and keeping blue-collar workers at home. This wasn’t a buy-side recession – consumers kept buying – but a supply-side recession with businesses forced to close and lay off 20.6 million workers. It sure looks like the US economy didn’t need the stimulus and Biden has invited Carter-like hyper-inflation and an Obama-like jobless recovery
On the inflation front, April’s 12-month all item index rose 4.2%, a 12-year high, and the index the for used cars and trucks rose 10%, a 65-year high. Former Treasury Secretary Summers (D-MA) says inflation is “rising faster than he expected,” and Nebraska furniture veteran Irv Blumkin says vendors have levied multiple price increases since Biden took office. Biden’s Economic Council Chair Ceclilia Rouse on inflation: “we hadn’t forecast that…even the Federal Reserve was a bit surprised…we sincerely don’t want hyper-inflation.”
On the jobs front, unemployment spiked to 15% in April 2020 and dropped to 6.3% before Biden took office. But an inconvenient truth awaited: GOP-run states had reopened businesses and reduced unemployment to best-in-nation levels. To wit, the three states with the lowest unemployment rates are Nebraska (2.9%), South Dakota (2.9%), and Utah (2.9%), and the three states with the highest jobless rates are (blue states) Hawaii (9.0%), New York (8.8%), and New Mexico (8.3%).
Biden knows open-up Florida‘s unemployment (4.7%) is lower than shut-down California (8.3%), and his economic team can connect the dots to business re-openings, but Biden will never own that embarrassing fact. Consequently, his economic message is pure mumbo-jumbo.
- In spite of 6.4% GDP growth in the first quarter, Biden responded to April’s bad jobs report by saying the cure was ”growing the nation’s economy.” Not if scarce goods and uncertainty slam the brakes.
- In spite of March’s 8.1% spike in job openings and an all-time high 8.1 million un-filled jobs, Biden claimed the solution to prevent double unemployment checks keeping laid-off workers at home was “creating jobs.” Not when the un-employed in Massachusetts are paid $21.37 an hour to stay home.
- Biden’s COVID-relief bill gives states $350 billion to offset lost tax revenues. Surprise! Eleven of the top fifteen “neediest” states voted for Biden and those states are all run by Democrats (except Georgia).
- In spite of 175,000 low-wage immigrants crossing the border each month, Biden claims he’s “hyper-focused” on unemployment. When blamed for the spike in border crossings and arrests, Biden said “nothing has changed” on his watch because a spike occurs “every single, solitary year in the winter months.” Liar! March’s eye-popping arrests (173,384 illegal aliens) were topped in April (178,662 illegal aliens).
The fact of the matter is Biden tipped this nonsense in the campaign: “we’ll not just rebuild America – we’ll transform it!” He wasn’t joking: one bill to kill right-to-work laws in 27 states and an infrastructure bill that spends only 4% on highways and bridges. This explains why Biden seems non-fluent in economics: he thinks he’s re-inventing the science. And, if that doesn’t scare you, then nothing else will.
