Biden Shouldn’t Be Laughing About Inflation, Even When He’s the Punchline

The moral of the story is that ordinary, hard-working people throughout the economy are suffering from high inflation and high interest rates, and there is no sign of relief on any of this.

Comedian Trevor Noah at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner April 30, 2022. AP /Patrick Semansky

President Biden just doesn’t get it. In this case, the “it” is inflation. 

Inflation is by far the no. 1 issue in the country. By far. Mr. Biden’s approval rating regarding inflation is in the high 20s or low 30s. His disapproval is over 60 percent.

Even comedian Trevor Noah, during White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Saturday night, made a joke about inflation — a pointed, cutting edge whack, which is what happens at these dinners: “These people have been so hard on you, which I don’t get. Ever since you’ve come into office everything is looking up. Gas is up, food is up, rent is up. Everything.” Mr. Biden was among those there who laughed.

For good or evil, that dinner is now televised, so the whole country can see it. And if I were Mr. Biden, I sure wouldn’t be laughing at the massive price hikes for food, gasoline, and rents that the comedian mentioned — and I want to add sky-rocketing mortgage rates, natural gas, diesel for truckers, fertilizer for farmers, and on and on.

The latest CPI came in at 8.5 percent, the PPI over 11 percent, import prices 12.5 percent, the Fed’s own inflation target came in at 8 percent,

the 10-year Treasury touched 3 percent today — 175 basis points higher than a year ago — and the 30-year mortgage rate is coming in around 5.5 percent, which is up roughly 3 full percentage points, or 300 basis points in the past year or so.

The moral of the story is that ordinary, hard-working people throughout the economy — cops, nurses, teachers, blue collars, hard hats, people in Walmart, Target, restaurants, you name it — are suffering from high inflation and high interest rates, and there is no sign of relief on any of this.

The Federal Reserve will meet Wednesday and will probably raise the target rate by 50 basis points, or half a percent, to bring it to just under 1 percent, which is still 750 basis points below the inflation rate.

How about this for investors: There are well more than 100 million Americans invested in the stock market with their retirement savings through IRAs, 401(k)s, or index funds or the like. Year to date, the benchmark S&P 500 is down 13 percent. Wait a minute, though. When you adjust that for inflation, it’s actually down well over 20 percent. Ouch, that hurts.

President Biden doesn’t like investors. All he wants to do is tax them. Yet the majority are not rich people. Yes, the richest have the biggest asset portfolios. But numerically the majority of investors are not rich people.

By the way, I’d like to help them get rich, which is why I keep saying the cavalry’s coming. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself. Mr Biden must not like farmers, or motorists, or renters, or homeowners with mortgages, or people who work in fossil fuels, or hard-hats who build pipelines. Other than woke climate-change extremists, I don’t know who he likes.

He’s trying to buy off students by forgiving their loans, but polls show young people are deserting the president in droves just like everybody else.

Other than the work of the Federal Reserve, which has a crucial role to play in the fight against inflation, I’d like to know one thing the Biden administration is doing to reduce inflation. Just one.

The obvious ideas are to freeze domestic spending and open the regulatory doors to oil and gas production. But that’s way too easy. The Bidens won’t do that. 

From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business News.


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