Economics 101: The problem, of course, is money-printing, by the Federal Reserve, done to finance all of the big-spending government pork programs.
Here's a Feb. 25 tweet from the man who knows more about inflation than anyone, Johns Hopkins University professor of economics Steve Hanke, showing the proof of it:
https://twitter.com/steve_hanke?ref...022/03/biden_goes_bonkers_over_inflation.html
Pres. Biden and the woke media have a new inflation boogeyman: Vladimir Putin. The Russia-Ukraine crisis has NOTHING to do with inflation. Current U.S. inflation is at 7.5% because the US money supply has increased by an unprecedented 41.2% since Feb 2020.
https://twitter.com/steve_hanke?ref...022/03/biden_goes_bonkers_over_inflation.html
Increase your money supply, increase your inflation, this isn't hard to understand. Power Line has some excellent charts showing it for those who
prefer pictures. In Hanke's WSJ essay last year -- which correctly forecasted this inflation picture today -- he and economist John Greenwood explained that the "monetary bathtub is overflowing" found here:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/monetary-bathtub-overflowing-inflation-drain-transitory-11634847429.
Update: Here is their latest, which ran in the
Wall Street Journal Friday.
Oil prices, which some incorrectly see as the root of the controversy, are just one part of the inflation basket that creates the big inflation number -- the actual root of the problem is the money itself, the thing that measures the value. Plenty of places around the world pay higher energy prices than we do, but sport either no or low inflation, and the problem actually evens itself out without spreading through the economy. But when money has no place to go, no place to serve as a productive vehicle, because there is too much of it floating around -- then inflation hits everything. Inflation is the backwash of money with no place to go -- the monetary bathtub flowing over, or given the worthlessness of these government spending programs, the monetary toilet overflowing.
The 7.9% inflation printout that Biden is now trying to pin on Putin is a February year-over-year number, meaning, Putin's activity couldn't have influenced it even if such a thing were possible.
"Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon," as economics giant Milton Friedman laid it out ahead of the mighty Reagan-era boom that put paid to the Carter stagflation era.
But at least Jimmy Carter, with his sweaters and small is beautiful rhetoric, knew there was an inflation problem. Joe doesn't.
"Milton Friedman isn't running the show anymore," Biden
declared as recently as 2020 and, well, yeah, with the February report showing 7.9% year-over-year, we know.
This is what the U.S. looks like without Milton Friedman running the show anymore.
For Joe, the problem is the reaction to the inflation, not the inflation itself. Apparently, voters are supposed to deny it, blame producers, call it a good thing, or do what Biden does, which is Blame Putin.