In the Covid Spring of 2020 the UniParty politicians conspired to impose the most destructive combination of economic policies ever before imagined. They amounted to a thunderously negative Supply Shock coupled with a tsunami-like positive Demand Shock.
The result was a near instantaneous eruption of 40-year high inflation that sent middle class economics into a severe tailspin. Now, 50 months after the lockdowns hammered the supply-side of the US economy and the stimmy bacchanalia flooded household banks accounts with trillions of artificial demand, the full extent of the resulting inflationary disaster needs be detailed---along with fingering the UniParty culprits who fostered it.
But let's start with the tab for damages because it's far more severe than the finger-pointing politicians of either party would have you believe. And that means scrolling back to December 2016 to negate the MAGA fantasy that inflation was 1.3% when the Donald left office and then soon hit 9% under Joe Biden, who therefore bears all the blame.
Not at all. Donald Trump lite the inflationary fires by adding $8 trillion to the public debt on his watch---a staggering total that was equal to all the debt accumulated by the first 43 president during the first 216 years of the America republic. And then to add insult to injury he harangued and pressured the Fed to monetize this eruption of red ink, even as he monkey-hammered goods and services production by ordering the 2020 Lockdowns, thereby priming the main street economy for an unprecedented inflationary whipsaw---surging demand and shrinking supply.
At the same time, the Dems of Capitol Hill were all in on the spending, borrowing, printing and mandating tsunami---even as the party's coalition of Federal bureaucrats, Blue State governors, public health departments, public employee unions and the subservient mainstream press beat the tom-toms for lockdowns, quarantines and drastic curtailment of daily economic life. Then when "Joe Biden" arrived in the Oval Office, the Dems fueled the inflationary flames with another utterly unnecessary $2.2 trillion stimmy on top of the $4.5 trillion that the Donald had inked into law in 2020.
Still, the preposterous Biden claim that his Administration has made great progress on inflation is even more risible than the Trumpian boasts. The reasonably serviceable 16% trimmed mean CPI has been still rising at a 4.1% annualized rate during 2024 to date, which is not even close to the Fed's 2.00% target; and if sustained over 10-years, it would reduce the purchasing power of wages and savings by fully 35%!
That is to say, what counts is not the most recent short-term rate of change, but the cumulative increase in living costs over any meaningful period of time. Measured since December 2016, in fact, the Trump/Biden UniParty has a lot to answer for.
The 16% trimmed mean CPI is up by 28.2% since then. So there are literally tens of millions of middle- and lower-income households in the US whose wages and salaries have not nearly kept up, meaning that living standards are shrinking like rarely before.
