When I look back on the calendar, it was March of 2020 when Covid really started impacting us around the world. That drove us into a global recession, but if anything, prices either held or fell for most goods and services. The governments around the world propped up their economies with stimulus that certainly helped.
Then, around the later summer of 2020, the then-US administration started advocating re-opening our economy. Vaccines were around the corner (which they were already in trials), and we needed to get people back to work and kids back to school. A large portion of states, especially in the south, took that advice as much as possible, and those economies rebounded quickly, although not entirely. Many cities and states did not, however, and it showed in overall production output and unemployment statistics. The numbers are all out there for you to review on your own, and they are telling.
Then, before and following the election, we saw improving economic numbers yet the new administration wanted to spend even more on Covid relief. Another $2.3 trillion more. So, they did, with no GOP support. That was for a reason, and we’re seeing that play out now.
Never mind the additional almost $1.2 trillion infrastructure deal passed a few months ago by the senate (now stalled by Pelosi as they fight to also get the $3.5 trillion additional in a complete make-over of our country – and that is not at all an exaggeration; go read the current contents). Never mind that we have a total budget of over $4 trillion in the government each year (roughly) with only $3.7 trillion inbound as revenues. Never mind the CBO and other non-partisan groups have put the actual cost of Biden’s $3.5T at closer to $5.5T. Never mind any of that.
Let’s instead focus on basic, basic, basic economic principles that helped get us here today. When you have a truckload of strawberries to go sell, that’s great. But when your buyer only needs a little store-size carton (with about 15 strawberries), guess what? You either let the rest of the truckload go bad, or you discount the living daylights out of them to move them. Well, now we have the US dollar. As I blogged earlier, currency valuations are a complex machine, but when the dollar is bought and held as the world reserve currency, everybody wants them. But not ALL of those dollars. So, when we have too many, we have to discount them. This also makes other countries dump them from their reserves. Which discounts them further, because now we have even MORE out there in the global market. A ha! Now we understand a portion of currency devaluation principles! Moral of that story: Stop printing what you don’t have the ability to place into global reserves, among other locations.
So… Now we have our boy Joe. Sorry – this is where I attack his policies. Stop reading if you like what is happening. Anyway – Joe is printing dollars for all his programs as fast as a popcorn machine at a crowded movie theatre (if we could still go and afford to buy it). Joe has cut our US energy production (slashed, actually), with things like home heating oil climbing upwards of 50% (sorry, New England states) and gas now passing $1.50 more per gallon than when he took office. We have … today … a Port of Los Angeles that normally has 17 ships berthed for offloading now trying to offload 63 ships, with 97 more in the bay (some now for weeks), and over 24 more at sea enroute. 24-hour longshoremen shifts Joe and Mayor (now Secretary) Pete touted have failed, because they can’t get the downstream supply chains to transport and accept the goods in 24 hour modes. General inflation is passing 5%, no longer called transitory by the Fed, economists are warning that we are quickly slipping BACK to recession, food inflation is between 4% and 22% (depending on the items), shelves are empty at stores, etc.
This is all policy driven. Sorry – it is. But let’s look at what has changed in 24 months, to bolster that statement: We have the same workforce, minus 0.002% due to Covid. We provided so much extended relief for so long that the money was banked (highest deposit rates at banks in decades). Evictions were frozen. Then we extended the relief even longer after Biden was sworn in – until September of 2021. So now we have energy prices soaring, and OPEC refusing to increase production. Oil is again approaching $100/barrel, up from $30. Projected to head north of $150-$200 (first time EVER). We have disappointing jobs numbers, with now over 10.4 million jobs open (up from 9 million just a couple months back). August was the Great American “Quit-Out”, where millions just quit their jobs – a new record again. We have a dollar that is tanking in value – which drives inflation directly. We have groups trying to re-construct school-taught history with theories… and those materials being sold to schools are even being peddled by the Attorney General’s son-in-law (yup – go look that one up .. as Garland wants parents now investigated as domestic terrorists for fighting those same “revised” materials). We have seriously damaged law and order in most major cities (go read Oregon HB 2928 .. police had to sit back and watch rioters last week, $500,000 in damage later, no arrests… and the list of those violent criminal activities is long, nation-wide, and record-setting). And now we have mandates for vaccines that are preparing to fire tens of thousands of healthcare and public safety workers, at a point where they’re already burned out. This is the mess a sweep of majorities has caused.
A FB friend of mine recently posted that we all need to stop posting negative stuff, and get happy stuff online. Perhaps that will then trickle down to make us all happier. I don’t disagree. But I promise you I did not vote to get us into this mess, and now I’m one of those voices that is out there to hopefully show enough evidence to have us all vote to get OUT of this mess. That’s not a happy job, and I’d prefer to not have taken it, frankly. So, here’s my hopeful, happy post:
Starting this month, we all have ballots. It starts there. Think carefully, and look at platforms at all levels and not your emotional hatred for one guy that you then labeled every other candidate from that party as being tied to. The paragraphs above should have outlined the results of that…
Have a happy evening!
