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Tag: gdp growth
Joe Biden

Wake Up And Look At What's Really Happening In The Biden Economy

You may have noticed in recent weeks that alarming headlines about inflation – specifically, those ubiquitous stories about the cost of gasoline, or eggs, or other household goods – have vanished. Media outlets no longer feature those fearsome charts with arrows zooming skyward, or video loops displaying the latest eye-popping gas station signage.

Much as the mainstream media seemed to enjoy scourging President Joe Biden with the bad news about raging hikes in the price of everything, that depressing theme has disappeared because inflation is falling.

In October, what economists describe as “core inflation,” meaning the price of goods and services other than food and energy, declined to 2.0 percent – the target set by the Federal Reserve. And what they understandably call “headline inflation,” the more volatile measure of prices that include all consumer purchases, including groceries and gas, dropped on a monthly level to zero.

Got that? Zero. Year over year, the rise in personal consumption expenditures has plummeted to three percent.

So encouraging were those numbers to the financial sector – and presumably the central bankers at the Federal Reserve – that some now forecast a cut in interest rates. Dropping rates would likely prevent the recession that has been forecast (with glee) by many Republicans – and bring America in for a “soft landing” from the pandemic recovery.

Will Biden get any credit for this improvement? Not from most media organizations, nor from pundits who wrongly blamed him for the inflation spurt in the first place, when they knew that other countries were suffering much worse price increases in the pandemic’s wake. Indeed, too many outlets are barely even noting that inflation has collapsed.

At the same time, the president’s “Bidenomics” program has brought continued steady growth and strong employment, with the annualized gross domestic product topping 5.2 percent in October – and unemployment steady at 3.9 percent. Economists have long tended to view a four percent jobless rate as “full employment,” essentially the best that can be achieved in a capitalist system without spurring inflation. Our current unemployment level is among the lowest in the G-20 industrialized countries.

The reason is so simple that even a wingnut can understand: Under this president, the United States has seen an unsurpassed record of job creation, with 14 million new positions since he took office, far more than the last three Republican presidents combined. The social impact of high employment is profound, which is why traditional Democrats like Biden consistently promote infrastructure, education, environmental, and income support policies that boost jobs. As California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom explained during this week’s Fox News debate with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis (whom he crushed), the nation is now seeing the lowest rate of poverty in our history, as employment among Blacks, Hispanics, and women have reached new peaks.

Are you starting to see a fuller picture here? Let’s add a few more features: Personal income rose over five percent in the first quarter of this year and contined to go up into the second and third quarters. Consumer spending rose 3.6 percent, while housing investment increased to 6.2 percent, almost half again what had been predicted.

You may well retort that polling consistently shows – and the media persistently emphasize – that most Americans say they are unhappy with the economy and blame the president, resulting in poor approval ratings and endangering Biden’s reelection prospects. And that’s undeniably true, as far as it goes. But more than one expert now wonders why, if so many of our neighbors feel pessimistic and even angry, they keep buying stuff as if everything is working out just fine.

Economist Dean Baker suspects the influence of slanted news coverage and can imagine a very different political scenario. “If we had the exact same economy, and Donald Trump was in the White House,” Baker says,”Trump would be endlessly saying ‘greatest economy ever.’ Every Republican politician in the country would be amplifying the claim and all the political pundits would be writing that the strong economy will make Trump almost a sure bet for re-election.”

Sooner or later, the majority of Americans will wake up and realize that Joe Biden has not only protected us from recession but has created the conditions for a generation of prosperity. Let’s hope they figure that out before it is too late – and vote to defend the future from Trump’s madness.

Biden Boom Hits New Heights, As Press Buries The Good News

Biden Boom Hits New Heights, As Press Buries The Good News

When the Commerce Department on Thursday announced that the economy just grew at the fastest rate in nearly 40 years, posting robust growth numbers not seen since the Reagan era, none of the network newscasts treated the announcement as a big deal. In fact, two of the three newscasts, “ABC World News Tonight” and “CBS Evening News” didn’t even cover the story on Thursday — “NBC Nightly News” gave it one sentence.

The same media that remains in inflation hyperventilation mode, just cannot work up the energy to consistently inform news consumers about the red-hot economy under President Joe Biden. It won’t billboard the fact that it grew so rapidly in the fourth quarter of last year that it pushed the annual gross domestic product rate — the broadest measure of economic activity — to an eye-popping 5.7 percent. (The GDP under Trump never got above 3 percent.) Consumer spending also soared 7.9 percent last year, the quickest clip in since 1946.

So attached to the idea of using economic news to bash Biden, the press doesn’t know what to do when the data demolish the media’s preferred storyline. That was obvious by the fact that the coverage of the blockbuster GDP news seemed to go out of its way not to mention him.

In its GDP news piece, the New York Times made no reference to Biden or that the soaring economic data were a boost for the administration. But when the Times covers jobs reports and inflation updates it makes sure to emphasize, prominently in the coverage, that that news is bad for Biden. In its reporting on the jump in the December inflation rate, the newspaper mentioned Biden in the very first sentence, referencing, “a troubling development for President Biden and economic policymakers.”

This trend is quite common. The Associated Press in its reporting on high inflation in December also mentioned Biden in the first sentence, while its recent report on GDP figures didn’t mention him until the tenth paragraph, and made no suggestion that the figures represented a win for the White House.

Then there were the news outlets that acknowledged the GDP numbers were good news, but stressed that bad news was likely around the corner. “Economy Caps Strong Year as Worries Lurk,” was the Wall Street Journal page-one print headline. CNN rushed in with similar, glass-half-empty analysis: “The Economy Boomed in Biden's First Year. His Second Will Be Harder.”

The CNN spin was especially remarkable because the network spent the second half of last year burying Biden with doomsday economic coverage, especially regarding inflation, which was deemed a “political nightmare for Biden.” (Remember CNN’s wacky report about gallons of milk?) Then when GDP numbers confirmed that the economy had been on fire last year, CNN begrudgingly acknowledged the fact (“the economy boomed”), then quickly insisted Biden faces economic trouble in 2022.

Heads, Biden loses. Tails, Biden loses.

That media drumbeat of negativity, cheered on by the GOP, has taken its toll. Recently asked in a YouGov poll if they had “heard mostly positive or mostly negative news stories about the economy,” 48 percent of Americans said “mostly negative,” and just 8 percent said “mostly positive.” (28 percent said both negative/positive, and 16 percent said they hadn’t heard much about the economy at all.) Those results came in the wake of a media study that showed Biden was getting worse coverage late last year then Trump did in late 2020.

Note that the same day the GDP announcement was made, a National Public Radio reporter was on Twitter asking listeners to share their stories of economic gloom: “Has your 2021 raise been wiped out by #inflation? Has your 401k taken such a steep dive you're rethinking retirement? The @nprbusiness desk wants to hear from you.” The plea raised the obvious question: Why does NPR only want to hear bad news about the economy?

Another key fact about the coverage: The GDP for 2021 obliterated expectations that had been set by economists during the run-up to the announcement. Yet still the press shrugged. That’s telling because when it comes to reporting on monthly jobs reports, the press bases its coverage entirely around the same type of expectations. When 199,000 new jobs were added in December, the press treated that as bad news (“faltering,” “a major disappointment”) because the key number failed to beat expectations.

Last year, NPR announced the 210,000-jobs report for November was a “bust” even though the unemployment rate tumbled from 4.6 percent to 4.2 percent in just 30 days. By contrast, back in January of 2020, NPR cheered that the U.S. economy under Trump was “revved up” because 225,000 jobs had been created. That jobs report was good news because it beat expectations.

So why wasn’t the estimate-beating GDP news treated as a huge deal? NPR, which has been committed to doomsday economic coverage under Biden, tried to downplay the news, suggesting that “believe it or not” the economy grew last year.

For NPR, good economic news under Biden is treated as a mirage.

Reprinted with permission from PressRun

Numbers Shows Joe Biden's Economy Is Actually Beating The World

Numbers Shows Joe Biden's Economy Is Actually Beating The World

The U.S. economy is expanding at a seven percent rate over the last three months, up by five percent from the beginning of the year. That number isn’t just three times the expected growth rate in Europe, it almost doubles the rate of growth in China. As reported in The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. economy is genuinely a world-beater. It’s doing so well that for the first time in years, “The force of the American expansion is also inducing overseas companies to invest in the U.S., betting that the growth is still accelerating and will outpace other major economies.”

Less than two months into his presidency, Biden pushed through the American Rescue Plan. That plan provided emergency payments to every American, an increase in the Child Tax Credit, extended unemployment payments for those nearing the end of their benefits, lowered the cost of health care subsidies, picked up 100 percent of COBRA costs, and offered a host of benefits for small businesses that included outright grants. It took the better part of a year to get the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act through Congress, but by that point the economy—bolstered by Biden’s policies, a renewed confidence from business leaders, and a robust rollout of vaccines against COVID-19—had cut unemployment numbers by a full two percent.

Rolling into the holiday season, America is enjoying record low levels of unemployment and levels of economic growth that exceed the wildest unfulfilled promises of Donald Trump. But at the same time, CNN reports that President Biden’s approval levels for handling the economy are at record lows. The best economy in 50 years enjoys just a 44 percent approval rating.

Because a disaster-addicted media will find disaster, even if it has to create it.

The front page of Wednesday’s New York Times contains nothing about the record pace of the economy. It does contain dire warnings about supply chain issues affecting Christmas gifts and what seems to be an obligatory feature on the threat posed by inflation. Cost of baguettes is up in Paris! Sacré bleu!CNN offers up the story about Biden’s bad economic ratings but nothing on the booming economy. The Washington Post is economy-free when it comes to their front page—either on paper or internet.

For most of the year, the Times has led the way pounding on the drum about inflation. It doesn’t matter if the focus was the cost of burritos or the end of the $1 pizza slice, the Times has been there to keep the inflation hysterics running at an extra-high pitch. The New York Times even hosted an online chat so that people could share how they were “victims” of rising inflation. That story about $1 pizza? A phenomenon that largely existed only in New York City to begin with? That was page one.CNNand other outlets have certainly not been slackers on the economic doom front. Every penny increase in the price of gasoline became a screaming headline. And repeatedly—repeatedly—outlets ran stories in which they quoted people making outrageous claims of 30 or 40 percent inflation without bothering to correct those claims.

There are no headlines to report that gas prices are down. There are no headlines to report that America is enjoying the best economy in 50 years under Biden.

There are no headlines to report a simple truth: The economy is not just booming because of Biden’s economic policies, or even because Biden’s work in fighting the pandemic has reassured business about the future. The economy is booming because, under the control of Donald Trump, no one knew what was coming next. Trump’s policies were utterly dependent on who had most recently kissed his butt, what industry he vaguely connected with a political enemy, and what he thought would piss off people who had not invited him to the best parties in New York City.

The economy is not just booming under Biden because Biden’s policies are good—even though those policies are good. The economy is booming under Biden because the economy was repressed under Trump, squashed under a weight of fear and uncertainty spawned by Trump’s erratic, spite-based approach. Trump handed out money to companies that had no evidence of potential, and he denied to it industries that he saw as aligned with his enemies.

Rationality turns out to be a better economic stimulus than owning the libs. But you wouldn’t know it from the media.

Five years of dealing with Trump demonstrated to the media that there was no better way to grab eyeballs than reporting the daily lies, insults, and disruptions. But what to do when there is no stream of verifiable lies? No Twitter rants filled with threats and childish names? What does the media do without their predigested disaster of the day?

Well, they can always create one. For the moment, the swelling omicron wave is satisfying the need to fill the page with legitimately downbeat articles. But don’t worry. There are Times reporters hard at work gathering unverified anecdotes to explain why inflation is going to make your next meal require a mortgage.

In the meantime, America is enjoying an economy that’s the envy of the world. And a press … that isn’t.

And when it comes to that issue with supply chains, here’s a part that isn’t getting much coverage:

Major U.S. ports are processing almost one-fifth more container volume this year than they did in 2019, even as volumes at major European ports like Hamburg and Rotterdam are roughly flat or lag behind 2019 levels. The busiest U.S. container ports are leaping ahead of their counterparts in Asia and Europe in global rankings as volumes surge.


Article reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

Trump Budget Features Absurd Growth Projections And Insane Cutbacks

Trump Budget Features Absurd Growth Projections And Insane Cutbacks

Reprinted with permission from DCReport

If you love more federal debt, endless wars using antiquated technology, and breathing dirty air, then boy oh boy has Donald Trump got a budget for you.

His new plan to spend $4.8 trillion in the 2021 budget year, which begins Oct. 1, continues his massive military spending with severe cuts to almost everything else, especially the Environmental Protection Agency.

His spending plan also anticipates a surge of economic growth, something Trump promised voters but has failed to achieve.

Instead, the Trump era has brought slowly declining economic growth, as we have had the last three years. Notice in the White House graphic below that the red line, actual performance, shrinks each year.

That growth has been very uneven. The rich have fared best, lavished with tax cuts and reductions in regulations. The working poor improved their lots in the states and towns where the minimum wage has been increased.

Trump’s budget predicts what would be an explosion of economic growth to 3 percent annually. That would be slightly below the 3.2 percent average during his lifetime so nothing to brag about if he does get lucky.

It would also be just half his 6 percent promise. My children, now grown, called such fantasies “happy go magic land.”

Based on this claim of much faster economic growth, Trump’s budget tables show the budget deficit shrinking by more than half, from 4.6 percent of the economy last year to 2 percent in the 2024 budget year. Pure happy go magic land.

And what of Trump’s 2016 campaign promise to retire the federal debt in 8 years? Laughable happy go magic land.The budget projects that annual interest on the federal debt will rise, but at a much slower rate than estimated in the previous budget. More happy go magic land.

In the world of reality finance, you should expect yearly red ink deficits in 13 digits – that’s a trillion dollars. Your share? More than $3,000 per year plus interest until you die.

Should you be feeling nostalgic for the mythical 1950s white picket fences perceptively dissected in the trailer for Pleasantville, Trump’s new budget will point you in that sentimental direction. More happy go magic land.Keep in mind that Trump says he is a financial genius who studied at the best finance school, Wharton. (He didn’t. He took real estate economics as an undergraduate and never attended the famous graduate business school.)It looks more like Trump attended school in the mythical Pleasantville where the books had blank pages.

That mythical town required that schools “teach the non-changist view of history–emphasizing continuity over alteration.”

After all, Trump contends that some things never change and certainly not for the better, as he tweeted on New Year’s Eve 2018 about his Mexican border wall and wheels:

Trump is, of course, wrong, as even idiots should be able to tell from the images of wheels that one Twitter commenter posted in reply to that 2018 Tweet:

Among the big takeaways from Trump’s new budget, which House Democrats will never approve but that still tells us about what Team Trump wants going forward:

  • Militarism, not diplomacy, will be the centerpiece of geopolitical affairs. Trump has left 25 ambassadorships vacant more than three years into his presidency. Another nine are pending, meaning no one is in place now. That means no ambassador in 34 out of 189 ambassadorial posts. And it’s not like these are insignificant posts. Among the countries without American ambassadors: Japan, Pakistan, the Philippines, Qatar—home to our Middle East military headquarters—and Ukraine.
  • The Environmental Protection Agency budget would be slashed 26 percent. That’s great news for companies who will not have to clean up their toxic wastes and won’t have to worry about getting caught or prosecuted if they do, not so much for today’s fetuses, infants and young people, more of whom will contract asthma, cancer and heart disease. But, heck, those future victims can’t vote, or even know what harms will be forced on them. So Team Trump says let’s party now and not worry about needless suffering and death years from now.
  • That border wall that Trump and his followers chanted Mexico would pay for? Trump’s budget proposes spending a lot more on it, all of it paid for by you, dear taxpayer.

Who could ask for more?