Earlier this week I wrote, “we don’t know precisely what the national inflation numbers for May will be, but we can all sense they’re not going to be good.” It turns out that May’s inflation numbers were the worst since December 1981. The confident declarations that “inflation has peaked” in February and April and May now appear to be whistling past the graveyard, as inaccurate as President Biden’s confident assertion in July 2021 that inflation was temporary and transitory.
Back in early May, President Biden pledged, “I want every American to know that I’m taking inflation very seriously and it’s my top domestic priority.” And no doubt later today we’ll get another presidential address on inflation, hitting all of the usual notes.
The president will tell us, for the millionth time, that knows what it’s like to go through financial hard times, and that he knows millions of American families are hurting. He will insist that his policies are working. If he takes questions, Biden will vehemently deny that the American Rescue Plan, passed in March 2021 and dumping another $1.9 trillion into an already recovering economy exacerbated the problem of too much money chasing too few goods. Biden will likely blame monopolies, corporate greed, and price-gouging — even though independent economic reviews keep finding that those are not the factors driving inflation. Biden will likely tout the independence of the Federal Reserve, even though that’s not really the problem or the point. The Fed raising interest rates a half a point in May appears to have little or no effect on runaway inflation.
And Biden will probably make an unwise promise or prediction that inflation will decline soon — even though independent analysts worry it hasn’t peaked yet, and may still get worse before it gets better.