Lies, Lies and More Lies

The President's Press Secretary Tells Lies Everyday

The President’s Press Secretary stands at her podium and spouts lies that are picked up by the Industrial Media Complex to gaslight the world. I want to illustrate the lies they are spinning on inflation.

The other day before the Consumer Price Index was released, it was clear the President had the number before the market. She came out and talked about how CPI is backward-looking, and Putin’s price hike and oh commodity prices are going down so they have that whole inflation thing under control going forward.

Yesterday, I blogged about why they didn’t and inflation is here to stay for a while.

Sure enough during the day, I saw the Industrial Media Complex write articles and the talking heads on business channels speak about CPI and how it was backward-looking. I also saw them pick up the logic that since commodity prices were down we were breaking the back of inflation. Trouble is, most of the talking heads don’t know a thing about economics.

My question is this. If it’s commodity prices that drive inflation, how come we didn’t have double-digit inflation back in 2008?

Here is a chart of crude oil prices. Pay attention to the largest spike. That was in June of 2008. Energy is a huge cost of production and distribution. If you recall, Crude Oil went negative $40/bbl during the Trump administration and we didn’t have deflation.

Here is wheat. There was a spike in Feb 2008.

Here is the hog market. We didn’t have big inflation in 2014 when hogs hit all-time highs. Live Cattle has a similar looking chart. You have to assume that the price of chicken tracked both of them. These charts sort of sum up the “volatile food and energy sector” that BLS talks about in every release.

I took a look at the actual statement from the BLS on CPI for June 2008. The index was up, but it only advanced 1.1% following a .6% increase in May. Yearly inflation was 2-2.5%. By the way, if GDP grows at 3% or better, that is acceptable. This was prior to the stock market falling out of bed in October due to the government's backstop which allowed banks to build the house of cards that created the financial crisis.

If it’s commodity prices and most specifically the price of crude that drives inflation, how come even higher prices in crude oil back in 2008 didn’t cause a similar jump in inflation as it supposedly has in 2022?

This is how you know it is government spending that really drives inflation. It’s not Putin. It’s not commodities. It’s Washington DC and their irresponsible spending.

I wouldn’t believe Biden on the jobs market either. Soon, that will be a “backward looking indicator” too. Today, JP Morgan’s profit dropped 28%. I saw on the StrictlyVC email some tech companies, like Tonal, in Silicon Valley are laying off 30-40% of their workforces.

Biden’s Administration is full of it.