After nearly two years of rampant price increases that appear to have no end in sight, one thing is clear: The economic forecasters amplified by the corrupt corporate media are always wrong.
You wouldn’t know it from headlines suggesting inflation is “easing,” “cooling,” and “slowing,” but November’s consumer price index advanced 7.1 percent since this time last year. Nearly two years into Joe Biden’s presidency, U.S. inflation has reportedly climbed 13.8 percent and is still lingering near the four-decade highs that burdened Americans for the last 24 months.
Gas prices last month may have dropped to an average of $3.25 a gallon, but what Americans saved when filling their tanks, they spent on skyrocketing rent and grocery bills. According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, Americans are now paying 49.1 percent more for eggs, 27 percent more for butter, and 14.7 percent more for milk compared to 2021. For context, in November 2021 the U.S. saw its highest inflation in nearly 40 years and a seven-year high in gas prices.
Popular holiday items such as airline fare, gift wrap, alcohol away from home, and toys, games, and playground equipment also increased this year by 36 percent, 14.3 percent, 7.1 percent, and 5.1 percent, respectively.
These gloomy numbers do not reflect the information the so-called experts have been feeding the public. Economists told Bloomberg last December that the core consumer price index would decrease to 2.5 percent by the end of 2022. One year later, that index, calculated without food and energy costs, sits at 6 percent.
This type of false inflation optimism is not new. For months now, the propaganda press insisted inflation “peaked” and will be relenting sometime soon. Even before Biden, the economic prediction game in the U.S. was misleading.
Those stories were largely informed by projections made by the same “economists,” “experts,” and administration officials who claimed most of last year that neither price increases nor Congress’s inflationary spending would make a dent in Americans’ pockets or the U.S. financial ecosystem.
In 2021, when the U.S. faced another round of record-high inflation and an ongoing supply-chain crisis, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell hinted in a speech that “moderate inflation forecasts looked plausible” even though “[t]he rise in inflation has been much greater and more persistent than forecasters generally expected.”
One year later, as Americans bear the burden of even larger price increases in essential goods, Powell is once again expressing confidence that the American economy is well on its way to correction.
“It is far too early to declare goods inflation vanquished, but if current trends continue, goods prices should begin to exert downward pressure on overall inflation in coming months,” Powell said in a speech in November.
Ever since Biden assumed office, economic “experts” like Powell, amplified by the corporate press, have repeatedly underestimated inflation and tried to downplay the effects it is having on Americans. They’ve taken the Biden administration’s talking points and disseminated them in the form of “forecasts” to try to convince Americans everything is fine.
It’s working. Consumers surveyed shortly before the release of this month’s CPI said they expected inflation to ease in the coming days. By mid-December, hopes of an economic deflation right before the holiday season were dashed by another high inflation rate.
A 7.1 percent CPI is not much to celebrate, but that didn’t deter Biden or his team at the White House from championing the increase in consumer costs as a victory.
“Inflation is coming down in America,” Biden declared from the presidential podium on Tuesday.
Why could Biden express so much confidence about dire economic circumstances? He knows his allies in the corporate media will keep amplifying the historically inaccurate “experts” because their overly optimistic opinions make Democrats’ inflationary economic agenda look good to Americans.
