By New York Post. White House press secretary Jen Psaki admitted Monday that fresh monthly inflation data will be “extraordinarily elevated” when it’s released Tuesday — after inflation hit a 40-year high of 7.9 percent last month.
“We expect March CPI headline inflation to be extraordinarily elevated due to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s price hike, and we expect a large difference between core and headline inflation reflecting the global disruptions in energy and food markets,” Psaki said at her regular press briefing.
NPR reporter Asma Khalid pressed Psaki on the White House’s attempt to blame Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, saying she had just returned from a reporting trip to Michigan, where many people told her “they feel that inflation has predated this war.”
“We’ve talked about inflation long before there was an invasion,” Psaki said. “But we also know that factually, if you look at the data, the average gas prices are up 80 cents to $1. It’s about a 25% — we’ve seen — increase in gas prices since the start of this invasion. And we know energy prices is a big driver of the inflation data.”
Inflation is a major liability for Democrats, who control both chambers of Congress and the White House, headed into this year’s midterm elections. (Read more from “White House Tries to Pass the Buck to Putin as It Warns Inflation Is Getting Even Worse” HERE)
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The Government Could Stop Inflation Within a Year. Instead, Expect Things to Get Worse
By The Federalist. Know-nothing pundits and politicians have been communicating to Americans that inflation is, like the weather, a mystery they can’t control. That’s simply not true, write three economic commentators in a soon-published book, “Inflation: What It Is, Why It’s Bad, And How to Fix It.” On the contrary: inflation is a direct result of governments cheating their people, and solving it is pretty simple, if politically difficult.
In the book, businessman Steve Forbes, economist Nathan Lewis, and business journalist Elizabeth Ames give laypeople a concise, readable introduction to monetary policy. They also lay out easy-to-understand policy and personal prescriptions for responding to an inflationary economy such as today’s. The book is short and immensely useful for those of us who are not economic experts or finance minds and just want politicians to stop stealing our hard-earned money and endangering our nation’s security.
It would also be useful to members of Congress and other government officials with the authority to address what especially for the poorest Americans is a frightful economic situation. The authors lay out a one-year plan for stopping inflation in its tracks based on historical and international experience.
In the course of explaining what inflation is and how it works, the authors make the important point that it’s not just about money. Inflation is deeply connected to societal flourishing in general. Societies in which inflation is rampant are often unstable, chaotic, and violent.
“Markets are people,” the authors write. “When money is no longer a reliable unit of value, not only trade but social relationships ultimately unravel. Nations afflicted by extreme inflation end up experiencing higher levels of crime, corruption, and social unrest. As we have seen throughout history, the end result can be a tragic turn to strongmen and dictators.”
(Read more from “The Government Could Stop Inflation Within a Year. Instead, Expect Things to Get Worse” HERE)
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