President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

It's meaningless. I am not posting why again.

But

1) the Federal Reserve is what is operative right now. They are trying (but not succeeding well enough) to create unemployment right now. All of the monetary stimulus they unleashed has created a ton of consumer price inflation. And they are trying to deal with it by taking us out of a "free money" era that politicians benefited from and which future politicians will get killed by (and they have nothing to do with ) if the central bank follows through (with the market consensus being that they won't be able to really follow through because there is going to be a catastrophic accident that creates a financial crisis. So they will let inflation rage).

The "Joe Biden" stuff is nonsensical at this point. He had some impact on what we were seeing, but it was when he signed trillions of dollars of spending into law during the pandemic, which stole a ton of growth from our future to essentially get pennies on the dollar in the present because of how that capital was misallocated. That left us with a ton of miplaced demand on the back of the "savings" it put into people's pockets, and with the pandemic putting people out of work, supply was badly out of balance with that demand. And that is what consumer price inflation is. ... demand chasing too few goods and services. We are still not out of that, but we also created so much demand in an unprecented way, that even a series of interest rate hikes (off of zero rates) in a short period of time is taking time to filter through, if it is going to be enough to have any effect.

2) What matters from that jobs report isn't a ridiculous number that doesn't actually count jobs or give a true picture of the employment picture in this country (the labor force participation rate is anemic; there are millions of people who could work if they had to, who find it better to not work). What people should be paying attention to is that wage gains eased. It's the true story of that report. The typical person in this country knows without the Bureau of Labor Statistics putting out a silly number. Because they are finding that they can afford way less stuff on what they are earning. To the point that it is creating economic hardship for more and more people.

If you want a "number" that is indicative of the economy today (as a capsule in time), this might be the number that paints a true picture:

More Americans Tap Credit Cards for Everyday Expenses

Debt levels are at record high, as people are using credit cards to cover their everyday expenses. And they are doing it at a time that interest rates on those credit cards are rising markedly (because of what the Fed feels forced to do now). Which is not a good formula for people.

And no, none of that is good for Joe Biden. ... even if it has little to do with him. His predecessors benefited from money being excessively and artificially cheap for a very long time. But that let the consumer price inflation genie out of the bottle, and they have had to stop. Now they are gingerly trying to raise the cost of money (even if they are not keeping pace with the inflation). And if they are successful. ... by necessity it will put people out of work.