America's Economic & Fiscal Nightmare
Inflation crushes citizens' prosperity, thanks to unaccountable Permanent Washington...
Financial markets swooned on Friday in reaction to Fed Chairman Jerome Powell finally bluntly acknowledging the systemic inflation crisis that confronts our nation. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 1,000 points, and key sectors fared even worse. The Nasdaq and Homebuilder sectors each lost over 4%, and Semiconductors melted down 5.5% in a single day.
Amid this mini–Black Friday market carnage, Fed officials gave themselves a giant pass for completely whiffing on the most painful inflationary crisis to afflict America in over 4 decades. This excuse-making unfortunately conforms to the broader trend of zero accountability for the administrative state apparatuses of America.
For example, Friday also marked the one-year anniversary of the totally botched Afghanistan evacuation that resulted in the needless, tragic deaths of 13 young American military heroes. But no leader paid a price for that Kabul catastrophe. Not one senior member of the Pentagon brass was fired or even rebuked. Nether did any civilian national security official have the decency to resign.
Sadly, the financial and monetary ruling class of permanent Washington seems similarly insulated, no matter how grievously they harm our economy. For starters, how is it possible that Janet Yellen still leads the Treasury after falsely claiming, repeatedly, that inflation was simply “transitory”?
Fed officials, from Powell on down, backed Yellen and the White House in spreading that inane talking point fabrication. On Friday, one such Fed powerbroker sought to excuse this total failure on the foremost task of the Federal Reserve system: preserving price stability. At the fancy Fed soiree in Jackson Hole, Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic told Bloomberg News that "inflation is extremely high...the levels we're at were unimaginable 18 months ago."
Is that so? “Unimaginable”?
Memo to Dr. Bostic, the Fed president with a Stanford doctorate: the signs were everywhere! All relevant indicators pointed directly at the looming inflationary hurricane, at least for those who cared to look. Biden’s total assault on American energy combined with an exorbitant binge of borrowing and spending to thrust America headfirst into an inflationary quagmire, and it was quite obvious, at least to honest students of history and data.
I do not have access to the army of PhDs and programmers that the Federal Reserve commands, but as someone who traded interest rates for 25 years as a Wall St. practitioner, the risks were abundantly evident to me, for example. As a simple citizen sitting in my home office, I loudly sounded the alarm through my media platforms that inflation was exploding.
In fact, precisely 18 months ago – literally to the day, Feb 26, 2021 – I appeared on War Room with Steve Bannon to warn exactly about this looming crisis. Former senior White House chief strategist Bannon and I described the risks of stagflation, the rare and miserable combination of slow/no growth alongside surging inflation. I continued warning about this then-nascent stagflation crisis throughout early 2021, in my videos, "chalk talks," and writing.
I provide these receipts not for self-congratulation, but rather to highlight the abject failure of the supposed “experts” of the permanent political class to properly execute the foundational tasks entrusted to them. Even as the inflationary forces gathered steam, evidenced by reams of macro data and micro anecdote, dilettantes like Fed President Bostic completely missed the mark.
Why? What explains this total monetary fumble, and subsequent attempts at revisionist excuse-making?
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