Inflation Ticks Up — in a Warning to Trump

Today’s report showing that the pace of price increases is picking up again is a reminder that even if the recent wave of inflation was caused by President Biden, it’s now President Trump’s problem. So if Trump is serious about fulfilling his campaign pledge to “defeat inflation,” he needs to look at the root cause of the recent price spiral. Federal overspending, high taxes, and excessive regulation are all part of it, but the heart of the problem is our fiat money system.Wednesday’s numbers show price increases accelerating, “the latest sign that inflation’s steady decline over the past two years has,” as the Associated Press put it, “stalled in recent months.” Consumer prices rose 2.3 percent in October over the prior year, according to the Federal Reserve’s preferred gauge, the personal consumption expenditures price index. Worse, “core” prices were up 2.8 percent versus last year, compared with a 2.7 percent rise in September.These are not earthshaking numbers. Yet while Mr. Biden and the Fed were eager to declare inflation vanquished, today’s data suggest their optimism could prove premature. Even as the Fed seems undeterred from its goal of cutting interest rates — after raising them to reverse the Biden inflation — the central bank is having trouble getting the pace of inflation down to its 2 percent target. The voters wanted not just slower inflation, but lower prices.After all, one of the reasons Trump was hoisted back into office was his platform vow to vanquish the inflation induced by Mr. Biden. This pledge was made in the context of a historic rise in prices not seen since the 1970’s era of stagflation. Consumer prices rose some 20 percent overall after Trump left office. That’s just an average, though. Household staples like sugar, eggs, beef, and bread are up by 40 percent or more. No wonder voters were frustrated.In the days before the election, the New York Times probed this voter sentiment. Its report reflected the perplexity of the liberal establishment over the monetary challenge. “Inflation Is Basically Back to Normal,” the Grey Lady’s headline sniffed. So, “Why Do Voters Still Feel Blah?” The answer, these columns noted, is that Americans “are not dumb.” Even if “inflation has slowed, prices aren’t retreating, just rising more slowly.” Gold is the bellwether for this trend. As prices surged, the value of the dollar in terms of gold plunged, to less than a 2,700th of an ounce. In that context, how could voters avoid feeling “blah”? The problem is that under a fiat currency regime, prices only move one way — higher. Under the gold standard, in which dollars are convertible into gold at a rate fixed by law, even if prices rise, the discipline of convertibility dictates that they will fall again.To get prices back down — and not just slow down the pace by which prices rise — will require the next administration, along with the new Congress, to examine the monetary system that has brought America to this impasse. A monetary commission would be a good place to start, by examining the track record of the Federal Reserve in managing the dollar as well as the implications of our shift to fiat money in 1971.Such a commission is likely to find that America’s abandonment of a dollar tied to gold — the historic basis of monetary value — and its embrace of a fiat currency has led to an intertwined crisis of debt and inflation. The end of the gold standard’s fiscal discipline allowed Uncle Sam to run up an unprecedented debt of some $36 trillion. The debasement of the dollar, too, led to an asset bubble that is a symptom of the diminution of the greenback’s value.This is not to say the way out of today’s morass will be easy. Restoring honest money would mean, for starters, an end to budget deficits. Keeping the dollar convertible into gold at a fixed rate would also mean dedicating interest rate policy to the primary aim of holding the currency’s value steady. The gold standard, as monetary sage James Grant says, “is a hard task master.” It is, though, the surest way to “defeat inflation.”

Inflation Ticks Up — in a Warning to Trump

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