Pirate's Cove

You can’t even say “welcome to the party, pal”, because this probably means the price of everything is going to skyrocket even more

Biden plots inflation fight with Fed chair as nation worries

Focused on relentlessly rising prices, President Joe Biden plotted inflation-fighting strategy Tuesday with the chairman of the Federal Reserve, with the fate of the economy and his own political prospects increasingly dependent on the actions of the government’s central bank.

Biden hoped to demonstrate to voters that he was attuned to their worries about higher gasoline, grocery and other prices whiles still insisting an independent Fed will act free from political pressure.

Like Biden, the Fed wants to slow inflation without knocking the U.S. economy into recession, a highly sensitive mission that is to include increasing benchmark interest rates this summer. The president said he would not attempt to direct that course as some previous presidents have tried.

“My plan to address inflation starts with simple proposition: Respect the Fed, respect the Fed’s independence,” Biden said.

That’s it? That’s the plan? After basically seeing an economy going south during his time in office, telling us inflation was temporary and transitory, yammering about pretty much anything else, that’s his plan?

Biden is running out of options on his own. His past attempts — oil releases from the strategic reserve, improving port operations and calls to investigate price gouging — have fallen short of satisfactory results. High prices have undermined his efforts to highlight the low 3.6% unemployment rate, leaving a growing sense of pessimism among Americans.

None of those really worked, and, let’s be honest, there are lots of things he has little control of. The root cause is China’s coronavirus. He can do little about the inability to get production up, but, he could at least tackle high gas prices by simply announcing pro-drilling policies.

It also represented something of a reversal by Biden as inflation weighs heavily on voters’ minds. The president asserted in April 2021 that he was “very fastidious about not talking” with the independent Fed and wanted to avoid being seen as “telling them what they should and shouldn’t do.”

Let’s also be honest: Biden wants to appear as if he cares, as if he is involved, as if he is Doing Something, but, he doesn’t care. He wants this to happen. He wants high energy prices to force people out of gas powered vehicles (while he drives around, and flys, in fossil fueled vehicles at taxpayer expense.)

“My predecessor demeaned the Fed, and past presidents have sought to influence its decisions inappropriately during periods of elevated inflation,” Biden said in an op-ed posted Monday by The Wall Street Journal.. “I won’t do this. I have appointed highly qualified people from both parties to lead that institution. I agree with their assessment that fighting inflation is our top economic challenge right now.”

The economy was rising from COVID while Trump was president, then crashed when Biden took office. Joe is apparently going to spend a month on this, which will be long on Blamestorming, short on taking responsibility, and you know he’ll push his silly legislation like Build Back Better (sic), and nothing will change. Oh, and he’ll take almost every weekend off.