Why inflation may be worse than you think it is

[mookiemcgee]

And what are your solutions, Mookie?

Well, as I've mentioned I think very few of the solutions would come as dictates from a president.

stopping/winding down QE is the most obvious part of a solution, and the FED isn't part of our elected gov't so Biden doesn't (and shouldn't) have anything to do with this step the FED already said it's taking. I'd again go back to our twitteriest president doing something he shouldn't in trying to publicly petition/shame/influence the FED chairman to 'speed up QE' as I showed in a previous post.

Spending happens, there is no stopping gov't spending as it's really the main function of a Gov't (collect tax, redistribute the tax towards things that are in the public good). Was infrastructure needed? Yes. Did we just agree to spend alot on it? Yes. Were we still able to borrow in order to spend at historically low rates? Yes. Does the spending need to be limited from here on out? Maybe, within reason.

There are other levers that could be pulled...Do I advocate them, maybe some of them. Again we are looking at a potential inflation problem but today/right now inflation IMO isn't a huge problem (again, I'm saying YET). 4-5% inflation is not a crazy crazy number. Some of the increase is a result of systematic financial issues that need to be addressed, but some of it is also short term supply chain squeeze. Gas prices dropped significantly this week on Omicron fears, Omicron + Omicron fears may start to relieve the short term inflation pressure without the USG doing anything at all. Also wages are up, first the first time in a long time. Is the current administration exaggerating that side of things? Sure, but wages genuinely are up and that does 'offset' some of today's inflation concerns.

One of my big concerns about long term inflation is the huge bucket of free to borrow money that has existed for about a decade. Large corporation don't spend any of their hoarded money anymore, they just borrow more money since it's (practically) free to do so and make their (almost) interest free payments. Its high time the FED raise (slowly) interest rates. They should have started this 4-5 years ago, and frankly they did and then got scared and lowered them again. Some of this is pandemic related, no body wanted to f*ck with the economy during uncertain times but even if the pandemic isn't over its the new normal and the Fed needs to start stepping it up (slowly) even if that slows down the stock market.

As you can see, from my perspective virtually none of the real solutions are going to come from or really have anything at all to do with the president. I think it's naive to think otherwise.

[jusplay4fun]

another example of Stupid Democrats:

Chris Cuomo, newly fired from CNN, faces an allegation of sexual misconduct

When CNN fired prime-time star Chris Cuomo on Saturday, the network cited new information casting a fresh and harsh light on his efforts to aid his brother, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in combating sexual harassment allegations.

Yet CNN's actions came just a day after a prominent Washington, D.C., workplace attorney arranged to share materials supporting accusations by a former colleague of Cuomo at ABC News that he had sexually harassed her there.

"My client came forward at this time because she felt in sharing her story and related documentation, she could help protect other women," Debra Katz said in a statement on Sunday. She added that the woman wished to remain anonymous.

Details of the woman's accusation could not be further determined. Katz said her client was motivated by outrage over what she said was the hypocrisy of Cuomo's assertion to viewers of his "profound" concern for the targets of sexual harassment.

Matt Dornic, head of communications for CNN, said that outside attorneys last week determined Cuomo had committed fireable offenses related to his brother's scandal, violating the terms of his contract. "When the new allegations came to us this week, we took them seriously, and saw no reason to delay taking immediate action," he said in a statement.

It took THIS long for CNN to figure out that Chris Cuomo MIGHT be biased in defending his BROTHER? Really? As long as viewer watched, I guess CNN was okay with Chris's biases. AND ONLY AFTER his brother goes to TRIAL, CNN FINALLY realizes that Chris is biased and should not be leading his defense in the court of Public Opinion? How stupid is CNN? And no one running or watching CNN realized that Chris Cuomo is BIASED?

[jusplay4fun]

another example of stupid Democrats and their policies:

The Double Irony Of Asking OPEC To Increase Oil Production

As I wrote in February of this year in The Inherent Risks In President Biden’s Energy Plan:

“If we prematurely discourage investment in fossil fuels — and then our dependence doesn't decline as rapidly as the Biden Administration envisions — that is a recipe for shortages, higher prices, and greater dependence on foreign nations for our energy.”

Like the Obama Administration, the Biden Administration initially adopted a relatively hostile position toward the fossil fuel industry. The revocation of the Keystone XL Pipeline permit and the temporary suspension of new oil and gas leases on federal lands were policies that signaled that the Biden Administration wants to move the country away from oil.

But what happens when Americans aren’t ready to move on from oil, and new domestic supplies aren’t meeting demand?

That’s the position we currently find ourselves in. The Biden Administration could respond in one of two ways.

They could say “High oil prices will speed up the transition to renewable energy” — which is certainly how they feel privately. After all, U.S. officials attended the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit in Glasgow this week, where they discussed plans to reduce carbon emissions. They could tell Americans to take their medicine, live with higher gas prices, and then privately hope that hastens the transition to green energy.

But people don’t like paying higher gasoline prices. So, the first irony is that the Biden Administration asked OPEC to pump more oil, undermining its COP26 messaging of reducing fossil fuel consumption. At the G-20 meeting in Rome, President Biden complained:

“The idea that Russia and Saudi Arabia and other major producers are not going to pump more oil so people can have gasoline to get to and from work, for example, is not right.”

President Biden pleaded with OPEC this week to pump more oil. Those pleas were rebuffed, and late in the week Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm called on oil-producing nations to immediately increase crude supplies so people won’t be hurt by high prices this winter.

The second irony in this situation is that one country that is producing a lot less oil than it was 18 months ago is the U.S. And policies that are hostile to the oil industry — indeed that will ultimately curtail U.S. oil production — potentially lead us to a place like this.

Secretary Granholm seemed unclear on why U.S. producers haven’t ramped production back up:

“I don’t know why at $80 a barrel those incentives are not there. During Covid, it was down — they backed off because demand was not there because people were staying home, we know that. Now that things are back up, the production should be meeting that [demand], there has been rigs that have been added but not fully.”

There are at least three reasons why production hasn’t completely rebounded from the spring 2020 plunge. First, some producers went out of business when prices fell. Some of that production isn’t coming back quickly. Second, you can expect that some marginally economic wells were permanently shut down when prices plunged.

But the third factor may be the most important. Oil production doesn’t respond quickly to rising price signals. Last year when prices plunged, the number of wells drilling for oil plummeted. Those rigs are slowly coming back online, but there is a lag of months or even years between drilling for oil and oil production. So, oil that we could have expected right now isn’t there, because the rig count plunged 18 months ago. The rig count has been climbing back all year, but it is still below pre-pandemic levels.

Because of the lag between price signals and production changes, the Biden Administration needs to make decisions now to ensure domestic supplies are strong during the rest of his term. One of the most important acts the administration could do is fast-track thousands of drilling permit applications that are waiting to be approved.

The administration slowed down these approvals early in the year. The pace has picked up substantially, but that initial slowdown is being felt right now. And that, in part, is why we have to ask OPEC to pump more oil. It’s a bad look for the U.S., but a consequence that I warned about in my February article.

The Biden Administration should learn a valuable lesson from this. An agenda to move the U.S. away from fossil fuels is a noble one. But, if in the process your policies contribute to a supply shortfall and prices skyrocket, you won’t be able to see that agenda through because you will be voted out of office. That is where theory collides with practical reality.

[jusplay4fun]

The posts by HitRed, theGreekDog, and Mookie all offer valid points and good analysis.

I object to egregious spending attempts by liberal, progressive Democrats. And Republicans, as pointed out by many here in this forum, have not been an effective opposition to the wasteful and/or excessive spending. We need to have more fiscally conservative and responsible leaders. INSTEAD, most of those elected to Congress want to use a large bucket to give out Federal BORROWED dollars so that they can BRAG about how they "work" for THEIR VOTERS by increasing Federal Debt. Giving away such monies increases the likelihood of their re-election.

Democrats have called a reduction to the INCREASE as a budget CUT. That is clearly misleading, almost to the level as practiced by saxi. Let's use a simple illustration: If $100 million are spent on a program in 2010, Democrats want to spend $110 million in 2011. If Republicans want to limit spending to $105 million, the Democrats in Congress HOWL that Republicans are insensitive and cruel and KICK their dogs, too. The Democrats want to claim that Republicans want to cut the budget and hurt little old ladies and take food from hungry children. Guess what the result is? We spend $115 million instead. Why do you think we constantly need to raise the Debt Limit???

WASHINGTON—The federal government could run out of money to pay all its bills as soon as Dec. 15, putting Congress on the clock to again raise or suspend the federal borrowing limit.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, in mid-November, updated Congressional leaders with a new estimate of when the government might not be able to meet all of its obligations. She previously said that she had confidence the government would be able to pay all its bills through at least Dec. 3.

Her initial forecast came after Congress raised the debt ceiling in October, following a deal among party leaders to lift the limit by $480 billion. The Senate and House then approved a short-term agreement, averting default for the moment.

Congress voted in October to lift the debt ceiling by $480 billion to roughly $29 trillion, a limit the Treasury is now bumping up against.

The Treasury has been using emergency measures to conserve cash so the government can keep paying its obligations to bondholders, Social Security recipients, veterans and others. Those measures have included redeeming certain investments in federal pension programs and suspending new investments in those programs.

A coming transfer tied to President Biden’s recent signing of a $1 trillion infrastructure bill could put strains on how much cash the Treasury has on hand. The law instructs the Treasury to move $118 billion to the Highway Trust Fund, which Ms. Yellen said would happen Dec. 15.

Ms. Yellen urged lawmakers to take action on the debt limit as soon as possible.

Voting to increase the debt limit has become politically difficult for lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, because it is often seen as a vote for more spending that could be used in campaign ads against them. Republicans in recent years have used the debt-limit vote as a pressure point to try to force spending cuts in programs they oppose. The 2011 showdown led to a bipartisan agreement to impose federal spending caps over the next decade, but Democrats have since resisted GOP efforts to tie the debt limit to budget or policy changes.

In 2019, Congress voted to lift the ceiling with relatively little drama, as part of a broader agreement between then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.).

https://www.wsj.com/articles/debt-ceiling-deadline-11627913756

WASHINGTON, Dec 7 (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives late on Tuesday approved a measure allowing Congress to fast-track legislation raising the federal government's debt limit and stave off a potential unprecedented default.

The Senate is expected to take up the measure, which prevents the use of stalling tactics, on Thursday.

That would speed the way for Congress to consider separate legislation to actually increase the current $28.9 trillion limit on federal borrowing authority to a still-to-be-determined level.

The House voted 222-212 in favor of the measure designed to speed approval of a debt limit increase in the often-plodding Senate. Only one Republican backed it.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/rates-bonds/us-house-introduces-fast-track-legislation-raise-debt-limit-2021-12-07/

As far as fiscally conservative Republicans, they are increasingly rare.

Under President Reagan, Caspar Weinberger was called "Cap the Knife." When he became Secretary of Defense, he became "Cap the Ladle."

President George W. Bush (the son) was elected as a fiscal conservative. Then 9-11 happened and he became one to spend without a penchant to be fiscally responsible.

Donald Trump did not show signs of being fiscally responsible. His deal making skills were reduced to letting Democrats having a lot of the spending they wanted.

[HitRed]

inflation is at the highest level since the 1980s.

[jusplay4fun]

U.S. Inflation Hit a 39-Year High in November
Consumer prices rose 0.8% in the month and 6.8% from a year ago

U.S. inflation reached a nearly four-decade high in November, as strong consumer demand collided with pandemic-related supply constraints.

{...great graph in the article, linked here}:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/us-inflation-consumer-price-index-november-2021-11639088867
{The graph also shows the impact of the Recession of 2008 until about 2010...}

The Labor Department said the consumer-price index—which measures what consumers pay for goods and services—rose 6.8% in November from the same month a year ago. That was the fastest pace since 1982 and the sixth straight month in which inflation topped 5%.

There is all kinds of bad news about inflation. You can read the rest of my linked source or find more bad news all over the media and online.

I think Mookie suggested easing or ending QE, Quantitative Easing, A good idea and good start.

and

I said:

jusplay4fun
Sun Dec 05, 2021 4:03 am

I have said already:
1) (and perhaps twice in this thread) that the President gets too much credit and too much blame for economic successes and failures.

and:

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan predicted both inflation and interest rates will surge as a result of the country's growing national debt and budget deficit.

"We are dealing with a fiscally unstable long-term outlook in which inflation will take hold," Greenspan said in an interview on Bloomberg Television last Wednesday. "I think we're getting to the point now where the breakout is going to be on the inflation upside. The only question is when."

from Mookie's CNBC article posted here
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/05/trumps-biggest-victory--tax-cuts--could-lead-to-the-demise-of-his-beloved-bull-market.html

[jusplay4fun]

The American Hotel and Lodging Association said that current guidelines for the coronavirus era have stated that “guest rooms occupied by the same customer over multiple days should not be cleaned daily, unless requested.”

The association said through a spokeswoman that the industry is concerned by worker shortages caused by unemployment benefits, schooling and child care issues, and continued health concerns about workplaces. About 96 percent of the association’s members reported being somewhat or severely understaffed, on a recent survey.

“As the industry welcomes the return of summer leisure travelers, we, along with many other industries, are now facing a rapidly emerging issue of staffing shortages, including housekeeping staff,” it said in a statement. “But the increase in leisure travel will not offset the nearly 500,000 hotel jobs lost due to covid.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/06/11/hotel-workers-reduced-cleaning/

When I travelled this summer (unfortunately, due to a funeral) the hotel had very reduces services. Breakfast was minimal and instead of eating there at the hotel, I walked to a nearby McDonald's in Colorado.

[jusplay4fun]

Is The CBO’s New Score Real Or Fake? Either Way, Build Back Better Is Deficit Spending

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2021/12/14/is-the-cbos-new-score-real-or-fake-either-way-build-back-better-is-deficit-spending/?sh=5bae6adc14e6

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) today released an estimate of how much it would cost to make most temporary provisions in the House-passed Build Back Better Act permanent. Under assumptions requested by Ranking Members of the Budget Committees, CBO finds a permanent version of the Build Back Better Act with no further offsets would increase budget deficits by $2.75 trillion before interest, as opposed to by $158 billion as the bill is written. Though CBO does not score gross costs, we find the gross cost of the bill would rise from $2.40 trillion to $4.73 trillion using CBO's numbers.

As we have noted before, the Build Back Better Act relies on a number of arbitrary sunsets and expirations to lower the official cost of the bill. These include extending the American Rescue Plan's Child Tax Credit (CTC) increase and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) expansion for a year, setting universal pre-K and child care subsidies to expire after six years, and making the Affordable Care Act (ACA) expansions available through 2025, among other provisions. CBO estimates that making most of these provisions permanent would add about $2.3 trillion to the cost of the bill (and lose roughly $260 billion of revenue from imposing the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap beyond 2025). Most of this increase is due to the cost of extending temporary provisions, though a small amount is likely because some the proposals will cost more in the early years if states and other entities expect them to be permanent.

https://www.crfb.org/blogs/cbo-estimates-permanent-build-back-better

(CNN)The Congressional Budget Office has released a new analysis of the Democrats' social safety net plan to see how much the bill would cost if a series of provisions were extended long term, fulfilling a GOP request intended to portray the bill as far more expensive than it seems.

The CBO estimates that the version of the legislation without sunsets would "increase the deficit by $3 trillion over 2022 to 2031." The analysis assumes that any extension wouldn't be paid for. The current bill, known as the Build Back Better Act, does not include such extensions to the provisions.

The latest CBO score is a Republican-led effort to show that the bill costs more than Democrats say it does, but Democrats are arguing that many provisions in their proposal sunset and therefore the true cost is not what Republicans say it is.
President Joe Biden has also said publicly that if any of the programs in Build Back Better were extended, they would be paid for in those subsequent years.

"I welcome a serious conversation about how to pay for the investments we make, but here is what those critics are not telling you. They're not telling you that I've committed to paying for every single program that extended, if any are, in future legislation, whether that's for a day or a decade," Biden said at the end of November during remarks about Build Back Better.

Yet, the analysis could be important to a key moderate Democratic member, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who has long been concerned that many programs in the Democratic bill may end up being extended or even become permanent.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/10/politics/build-back-better-cbo-score/index.html

JUST what we need, MORE deficit spending. Instead of calling everyone who opposes the idea a liar, we need reasonable, fiscally responsible discussion. Such discourse is sadly lacking in Congress and in much of the currently politically charged "debate" that is full of rancor, ad hominin attacks, name-calling, and sound bites.

What is apparently being trumpeted as a bill costing only some $1.8 Trillion, it is closer to $5 Trillion. Great Math.

On Nov. 19, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked if, in light of the CBO score, Biden would stop claiming that the Build Back Better legislation doesn’t increase the deficit. Psaki maintained that the bill doesn’t increase the deficit.

https://www.factcheck.org/2021/11/cbo-build-back-better-not-quite-fully-paid-for/

Jen Psaki Tries to ‘Fake’ Out the CBO’s Build Back Better Score
She says it didn’t evaluate the ‘actual bill,’ but the legislation is meant to deceive.

Desperate to pass yet another gargantuan spending bill, President Biden has declared war on a federal agency Vice President Biden regularly praised—the Congressional Budget Office.

In 2010, Mr. Biden described the CBO’s estimates as “the gold standard” and said of the office that “no Republican or Democrat questions it.” Later in his vice presidency he declared that the agency is “widely respected on both sides of the aisle.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/jen-psaki-tries-to-fake-out-congressional-budget-office-cbo-build-back-better-cost-biden-11639603930

[mookiemcgee]

in actual inflation news...

https://www.npr.org/2021/12/15/10644785 ... bond-taper

Rate hikes + quick rampdown of QE and bond buying

[jusplay4fun]

in actual inflation news...

https://www.npr.org/2021/12/15/10644785 ... bond-taper

Rate hikes + quick rampdown of QE and bond buying

"actual" news? You mean what I have been saying in my posts? This is from your cited article:

The Federal Reserve is paving the way for possible interest rate hikes next year, in an effort to contain stubbornly high inflation.

At the conclusion of a two-day policy meeting Wednesday, the central bank announced plans to phase out its large-scale bond-buying program faster than initially planned. The Fed started purchasing bonds during the pandemic as a way to keep borrowing costs across the economy low and to prevent any market disruptions.

Ending the bond purchases earlier would give the Fed more flexibility to raise interest rates sooner, if necessary, to keep prices from spiraling out of control. The central bank said previously it wanted to stop its bond purchases before considering raising interest rates.

The Fed is taking a harder line against inflation after consumer prices in November jumped 6.8% from a year ago — the largest increase in nearly four decades.

In a statement, the Fed acknowledged the rapid runup in prices. Although the central bank still believes inflation is largely driven by factors tied to the pandemic, which should ease when the health outlook improves, policymakers are no longer taking that as a given.

[milabell]

Inflation for savings is indeed a problem. And besides. Business is moving madly fast these days. And you have to remember that you can Sell Your Soul To Mrswdk. Exactly for your business and earnings. If you still do not know what it is, I advise you to learn and spread the word. Because nowadays it is a must. Take care of yourself and your loved ones.\

[Mod edit (dk): spam link edited out, possibly in a humorous fashion.]

[jusplay4fun]

The last post is by a person who has zero games and barely stayed on CC:

Joined:Mon Mar 07, 2022 7:42 pmLast visited:Mon Mar 07, 2022 7:51 pm

Thanks for sharing "ALL your wisdom."

[jusplay4fun]

Basically the USA has been printing money and giving it away to states, individuals, and criminal "shysters" who defraud the Government. Such is deficit spending. And the Crazy Liberals want to give away MORE MONEY for our children and grandchildren have to pay THE HUGE interest payment. Forget paying off the Debt itself.

Net interest payments on the debt are estimated to total $393.5 billion this fiscal year, or 8.7% of all federal outlays. (The government projects it will pay out a total of $593.1 billion in interest in fiscal 2019, which ends Sept. 30, but that includes interest credited to Social Security and other government trust funds.)


And with the Fed raising interest rate on the Prime, where will the amount go? UP..! of course.

also, same source:
The nation’s debt is now bigger than its gross domestic product, which was an estimated $21.06 trillion in the first quarter of 2019. Debt as a share of GDP grew throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, then leveled off before rising steeply during and after the 2008 financial crisis. The overall debt load has just about equaled or exceeded GDP since late 2012, which had not previously been the case since the end of World War II.



Above is a good graph; there are more at the source cited below. This is a good read here, with more good graphs; source:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2 ... nds%20Sept.

Until recently, the U.S. government was paying historically low rates on its debt, largely because of the Federal Reserve’s efforts to keep interest rates low during and after the Great Recession. But interest rates on federal debt have begun rising again. In fiscal 2018, the average interest rate on the public debt was 2.492%, compared with 2.232% in fiscal 2016, according to the Treasury Department. In June, the average interest rate had risen to 2.567%.

You might think such low rates would put off investors, but U.S. government debt is considered to carry very little risk, and historically demand for it has remained strong. Recently, though, investor demand for Treasuries has appeared to soften, which means the government – and, ultimately, taxpayers – could end up having to pay higher interest rates.

BONUS FACT: Though many may believe that “China owns our debt,” mainland China only held about 5% of the total debt as of May, or about $1.11 trillion. Hong Kong, a “special administrative region” of China, held another $204 billion. China was the top foreign holder of Treasury securities, ahead of Japan, which held roughly $1.1 trillion.

[HitRed]

The FED nailed it (finally)

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/go ... al-reserve

[jusplay4fun]

Government spending to blame for inflation spike, San Francisco Fed study says
COVID-19 spending cause US inflation to rise by 3%, researchers say

Ask Democrats and Republicans what is to blame for high U.S. inflation, and they would point their fingers at extremely different culprits.

While the White House has identified supply-chain bottlenecks and other pandemic-induced disruptions in the economy for the recent price spike, GOP lawmakers have pinned it on the president's massive spending agenda.

But now researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco are weighing in on the topic – and they say that massive government spending during the coronavirus pandemic has caused U.S. inflation to surge more than in other developed economies.

"Fiscal support measures designed to counteract the severity of the pandemic’s economic effect may have contributed to this divergence by raising inflation about 3 percentage points by the end of 2021," wrote Òscar Jordà, Celeste Liu, Fernanda Nechio and Fabián Rivera-Reyes in the San Francisco Fed's weekly Economic Letter.

In the span of just two years, Congress unleashed a torrent of federal money to shield the economy from the coronavirus pandemic, approving roughly $6 trillion in relief measures. Lawmakers approved about $2 trillion under Biden and $4.1 trillion under former President Trump, according to a COVID money tracker published by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan organization based in Washington.

The majority of the money allocated for emergency spending — close to $4 trillion — stemmed from two pieces of legislation: the CARES Act, passed in March 2020, and the American Rescue Plan, passed in March 2021. The remaining money came from the Response and Relief Act (December 2020), Families First Coronavirus Response Act (March 2020) and the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act (April 2020).

The sheer size of pandemic-related spending in the U.S. is entirely without precedent: During the 2008 financial crisis, for instance, the Obama administration approved a relief package roughly half the size of the American Rescue Plan, and a fraction of overall relief efforts this year and last.

Still, the San Francisco Fed economists cautioned that without such astronomical levels of federal spending, the U.S. risked sliding into a years-long recession with stubbornly high unemployment.

"Without these spending measures, the economy might have tipped into outright deflation and slower economic growth, the consequences of which would have been harder to manage," they wrote.

Core inflation, which strips out the more volatile measurements of food and energy, started 2021 below 2% on an annual basis and ended the year above 5%, the highest rate in decades. By comparison, inflation among countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries rose at a more gradual pace.

To compare fiscal stimulus in the U.S. with OECD nations, the researchers used an index of real disposable income to determine how much support was received by American households. They identified two distinct spikes in the U.S. that correlated with the American Rescue Plan, passed under Biden in 2021, and the CARES Act, passed under Trump in 2020.

President Joe Biden signs the American Rescue Plan, a coronavirus relief package, in the Oval Office of the White House, March 11, 2021, in Washington. (AP Newsroom)

"Both Acts resulted in an unprecedented injection of direct assistance with a relatively short duration. In contrast, real disposable personal income for our OECD sample increased only moderately during the pandemic," they wrote.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/government-spending-inflation-spike-san-francisco-federal-reserve

earlier, in this thread, I said:

And what are your solutions, Mookie? I offer solutions, if you do not understand. My solution is to be more fiscally responsible. What I have blamed Democrats about is being fiscally irresponsible. A big part of the problem here is that Republicans too have been irresponsible, in the name of COVID relief. We needed SOME, but now this has gone TOO FAR. There had been enough economic stimulus to avoid a recession. (Hence my entire post about the Fed.) Solutions have been offered, in case Mookie did not realize it.

Mookie labeled my earlier points numbered 8+ as rantings; NO, they were analysis, as I showed in my post yesterday. NOW Mookie ignores the analysis and want to dismiss them as mere criticism of Democrats ("the other team") . Again, Democrats and Biden are getting blamed (rightly, or wrongly). Hence the entire notion of "Let's Go, Brandon." It seems Mookie cannot handle such criticism and the blame.

QED

btw: Biden wants MORE federal spending on COVID vaccines, that we MAY NOT (hopefully) NEED. Democrats only know one solution: Spend more money they and the Fed. Govt. do NOT have and will have to BORROW. STOOPID Democrats.

Biden budget calls for future investments in health care as COVID aid runs out

The Biden administration’s 2023 budget asks Congress to devote greater funding to improve health care access for the next fiscal year. But the money aimed at absorbing the individual costs of pandemic essentials for 31.1 million uninsured people in the U.S. is already running out, and advocates are concerned about how lawmakers may reduce or forgo such funding as it considers the new White House proposal.

The White House’s budget released Monday called for $127.3 billion in discretionary health spending and $1.7 trillion in mandatory budget authority and would boost funding on things like improving access to mental health services for all Americans and efforts to “end cancer as we know it,” a priority Biden signaled in his State of the Union address earlier this month.

The proposed spending increases on those needs and others, such as maternal health, overdose prevention and HIV-AIDS treatment and support, were intended to “leave no American behind,” Health Secretary Xavier Becerra said. The budget also includes funding to defray the costs of child care and health care, pocketbook issues for millions of U.S. households.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/biden-budget-calls-for-future-investments-in-health-care-as-covid-aid-runs-out

And, of course, the Democrats want more MONEY for MORE than JUST COVID vaccines. MORE STOOOPID Democratic proposed spend to give away more FREE FREE stuff. They have yet to ensure the ACTUAL obligations of spending already promised, such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Those are enough to add SIGNFICANTLY to the Federal Debt WITHOUT more spending.

[HitRed]

This is really great until 10:30.

At 10:30 read this.

https://www.numismaticnews.net/coin-mar ... -explained

[HitRed]

5 stars. VERY level headed. No bomb throwing. World Reserve Currency history.

[HitRed]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... ood-prices

Country blocks cooking oil export.

Palm oil – used in everything from cakes and frying fats to cosmetics and cleaning products – accounts for nearly 60% of global vegetable oil shipments, and top producer Indonesia accounts for around a third of all vegetable oil exports.

[Dukasaur]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/26/indonesias-palm-oil-export-ban-sparks-concern-over-global-food-prices

Country blocks cooking oil export.

Palm oil – used in everything from cakes and frying fats to cosmetics and cleaning products – accounts for nearly 60% of global vegetable oil shipments, and top producer Indonesia accounts for around a third of all vegetable oil exports.

Good news. I expect a small decrease in mortality all around the world.

[jusplay4fun]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/26/indonesias-palm-oil-export-ban-sparks-concern-over-global-food-prices

Country blocks cooking oil export.

Palm oil – used in everything from cakes and frying fats to cosmetics and cleaning products – accounts for nearly 60% of global vegetable oil shipments, and top producer Indonesia accounts for around a third of all vegetable oil exports.

Good news. I expect a small decrease in mortality all around the world.

from COVID??