So to start it, I will begin with a topic hinted at by @Chew Toy McCoy in another thread about inflation. It is coming and it isn't just people on FB blaming Biden for high gas prices, but when people start really noticing how their weekly grocery bill is going up they are going to be looking for someone to blame.
Yeah and typically people blame a given administration, whether or not the prez could wave a magic wand and fix whatever it is. It's why presidents all know the bucks stops at their desk. They're an easy mark.
Reuters ran a piece a year ago about whether it's right to blame Biden for inflation.
While Democrats struggle to pass President Joe Biden's social and climate change agenda, Republicans have been pelting them with the repeated accusation that his policy initiatives are driving up inflation and making life costlier for Americans.
www.reuters.com
They could add even more onto "why blame Biden?" at this point, but it was a good start.
The Fed is doing what it can, meanwhile fintech is going the other way and finding newer ways to juice borrowing... and banks are whining about why can't they get in on it and why not loosen up the capital requirements so we can have another housing boom and bust while we're at it.
Does anyone else remember pictures of developers bulldozing unfinished housing starts in 2008? Big banks certainly hope not. They're dying to lend out those reserves and get back to being leveraged up 30 to 1 themselves, because after all the banks still ARE too big to fail, right?
The Republican and Democratic attempts to offset pandemic dips in the economy with government assistance have had the effect of keeping many consumers' savings or credit cards still viable, and the job market has been generous as the pandemic wanes to endemic status, so spending hasn't cooled off yet as much as the Fed might hope, but that's not on Biden.
The stimulus efforts and related pandemic-reactive measures - rent and floreclosure hiatus etc -- have been a
bipartisan choice of a federal government trying to stave off possibly irremediable effects on the economy, after we were initially kept unaware of what a whack the planet was going to take from covid-19. Supply chain adjustments were wrenching experiences for anyone who cares to remember not being able to find toilet paper or staples like beans and rice for awhile. Restaurants went nuts converting to takeout only. Supermarkets used to "just in time" inventory re-ups were caught off guard as well.
Enough people without paychecks AND without food would have meant riots in the streets. So, few sane people would seriously question those stimulus measures at this point. Countries around the world took similar measures as best they could. "Blame" for subsequent inflation hardly seems worth the time trying to lay at any doorstep.... except if one's in an election season!
Bottom line: these have been extraordinary times around the world and we're still coming out of them. In the USA, no one except the Fed and us down here in the Joe Sixpack league --trying to juggle energy costs and letting the kids have meat at least once a week-- can get too crazed over inflationary pressures per se, except Rs looking to round out "crime, immigration and..." with something else they figure will rhyme nicely with "vote GOP."
What goes up eventually comes down. We're still hoping for a soft landing. Only time will tell on that, and avoiding recession will be up to all of us. A President can be a cheerleader in terms of trying to get confidence back it up if it slides (or drops precipitously) but it takes a whole country to emerge from soft spots in the road. In the meantime, inflation is starting to abate in grocery carts.
In fact the agribusiness corporations are finally getting their wrists slapped for jacking up profits past cost of goods hikes passed on to consumers during the "greed still works" phase of this economy. Those hikes are just coming down now, after brand labels milked it as much as they could and drove consumers overwhelmingly to start picking generic goods in the supermarket aisles.
As for those other markets: the pot stirrers of the Street have tried pitching "bear market" and "recession" and still the average guy with a 401k just goes to work and figures he lived through 2008 and ensuing slog back, so... and the guy with a non union gig job and no 401k knows better than to blame Joe Biden for the state of manufacturing jobs in the USA. Joe Biden and the Dems are actually who have managed to get some infrastructure money into American job prospects.
Remains to be seen how bad heating season costs will get this winter, but in the meantime gasoline prices for the work commute have finally ocme down. If we want to blame someone for those energy costs as the snow season approaches, Putin's the easy mark there, not Joe Biden.
www.cnn.com
Boo.
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