The White House has struggled mightily to convince people that it can do something about inflation. Handlers finally decided to go straight to Wall Street with its message.
This might have been an even worse idea. The results reveal not one word about the real problem and the supposed solutions are strangely disconnected from any causative agent that would address the problem. That’s because the only real solution would amount to political suicide.
Let’s address the messaging in question.
On the issue of causation, President Biden has discerned the following: “Putin’s war,” the turmoil in energy markets, and supply chain problems. But there is a huge issue here. The inflation problem long preceded the war, it affects all sectors apart from energy (though transportation is currently worse), and supply chain breakages, while significant, don’t account for the fullness of the problem and, moreover, the Biden administration bears responsibility for this too by not normalizing post-lockdown economic life fast enough….