We’re sick of this!

He’s sick of this?

What? He is sick of being blamed for inflation, skyrocketing gasoline and food prices?

President Joe Biden apparently has no idea (or doesn’t care) how so many of us Americans are sick of his lying, denying, incompetence and stupidity. We’re sick of his and his colleagues’ destroying the value of our money, impoverishing millions of Americans with their spending and borrowing and besmirching the United States throughout the world.

What a colossal embarrassment to the American people.

The list of incompetent and stupid decisions is long and well known (take your pick: Afghanistan, southern border, Build Back Dumber, ruining energy independence, rushing to stand by Jussie Smollett, on and on). But the most galling ones now are inflation and his handling of Vladimir Putin — separate subjects but now inextricable in their effects on the American people.

Life in the United States is going to get economically worse for the remainder of 2022, with the U.S. economy more than likely falling into recession in 2023 before the effects of inflation can come to a halt. Crime, a consequence of inflation, will rise even more. And to borrow a Biden phrase, “make no mistake,” the United States and NATO are in a war with Putin, not with guns and soldiers (just yet), but an economic war that is making everyone but the leaders — the common men and women of the United States and Russia — suffer.

It’s Biden’s Inflation

We have focused on inflation multiple times, starting with our first warning April 22, 2021: “The insidious tax: inflation. … Food prices are rising 8% to 10% a month for restaurants. Don’t blame the suppliers. Blame the Washington looters for printing too much money.”

And we’ll continue to harp on inflation because it is one of the most evil, debilitating taxes of all. Most Americans don’t see it coming, and when it takes hold, it especially saps the living standards of the poor and middle class. They are helpless. They can do nothing to stop it. That’s where we are now.

Second, we’ll continue to harp on inflation with the hope — albeit even in a small way — of educating taxpayers on who is causing it, whom to blame for their declining standard of living and what it will take to stop it. Our leaders are spinning lies to protect themselves.

Putin didn’t cause inflation. This is not “Putin’s inflation.” Joe Biden and Congress caused skyrocketing consumer prices.

Please, do not buy their lying. Even Larry Summers, Democratic Party loyalist, former secretary of the Treasury and respected economist, said last week, “Joe Biden was wrong” about inflation.

If you are at all familiar with the real causes of inflation, you know that its roots are always — always — a result of government actions.

Even back in February 2021, James Gwartney, respected economics professor at Florida State University, forewarned: “It is a virtual certainty that inflation will rise, perhaps to double-digit levels … Inflation is going to be the big story of the post-pandemic economy. Get ready for an inflationary ride.”

To read Gwartney’s explanations for why, go to the online link in the accompanying box below.

Gwartney simply pointed out what economists have noted for centuries: Inflation is when your government increases the money supply. When Congress sent out COVID relief, the money supply increased 70% in a 12-month period, from $4 trillion to $6.8 trillion, the largest increase in history.

Famed Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises explained in the 1960s what an increase like that means: “If you are increasing the quantity of money, and you are not increasing the quantity of things which can be bought with money, you are only increasing the prices which can be paid for them.”

That’s exactly what occurred. Biden and the Democrats flooded the market with dollars while turning off the spigots that produce domestic oil. Voila! — too much money chasing too little gas.

They flooded the Americans with relief money while COVID lockdowns ratcheted back the supply of consumer goods. Gwartney predicted that when people were no longer cooped up by COVID, they would spend “big time.”

You’ve seen the out-of-state license plates. Those people chose not to fly and instead drove here. They increased the demand for gas just when Biden and the John Kerry Green Monsters ratcheted back domestic production.

So don’t buy the spin that we’re seeing rising gas prices because we no longer import Russian oil. As economist Alan Reynolds explained: “Formally ending the small and shrinking U.S. imports of Russian crude will not be noticeably harmful to the U.S. because that vanishing trickle of Russian crude can easily be replaced with oil from Canada, Mexico, Latin America or the Middle East… .” Or, God forbid, with increased production at home.

And yet, Biden, Pelosi, et al, are working the lapdogs in the media to claim innocence. It’s stunning.  Either they are such diabolical liars or they really are that stupid and incompetent not to understand and acknowledge they are unequivocally responsible for runaway price increases in everything.

What are they proposing to stop it? Of course, more government spending, more borrowing, more printing of declining-in-value dollars. Projections for the next fiscal year show a federal budget deficit of $1.5 trillion.

“If the practice persists of covering government deficits with the issue of notes (printing money), then the day will come without fail, sooner or later, when the monetary systems of those nations pursuing this course will break down completely.” So wrote von Mises in 1923.

There are two proven ways to stop this inflation. Von Mises: “The printing presses must be shut down in time, because a dreadful catastrophe awaits if their operations go on to the end.” Here’s a telltale warning sign of that coming catastrophe: Consumers begin buying wildly and hoarding because of the rapid declining value of their dollars.

The second way, which must occur in tandem with stopping the presses, is increased interest rates — the Paul Volcker prescription of the early 1980s.

Don’t expect bold action from the left-leaning Federal Reserve Bank to do either sufficiently. Its governors are clearly far too influenced by equity and inclusion policies and the fate of Democrats at the mid-term elections to take the economy where it ultimately and inevitably will end up: in a recession.

Putin and Sanctions

Of course, exacerbating the effects of inflation on Americans are Putin and his invasion of Ukraine.

“Make no mistake,” as Biden would say, the United States and NATO are indeed directly at war with Putin and Russia. While the U.S. and NATO allies might not — as yet — have troops on the ground or pilots fighting in the air, they are at war — a war of economic sanctions and retaliations.

When we and the U.K. ban the importing of Russian oil, wheat, fertilizer, vodka and other products, when we cut Russia out of the world’s monetary transfer system or quit selling our own American-made products to Russians, we’re making the lives of Russian people unpleasant. Take that, Putin!

Or so we think.

The objective is to make the common people of the sanctioned nation so economically uncomfortable and painful that they rise up and force out the leaders in charge. Good luck with that. How is that working for us in North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba?

What’s more, history also has shown that economic sanctions trigger another response in the affected nation: nationalism (See “The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities,” by John Mearsheimer). Native residents whose families have lived in the country for generations tend to stand up for the motherland.

At the same time, Putin, of course, doesn’t just sit in a corner and cry over the sanctions. He goes around the world and sells all his country’s products to other nations that haven’t taken sides, predictably supplanting what they might buy from the United States and likely at more favorable prices. Think of China, Mexico and Brazil, for example. Back at you, Biden!

Now flip the coin. U.S. sanctions on Russian products and the banning of doing business with Russian people and businesses inflict pain on common Americans — all the employees and businesses involved in importing Russian goods and selling them in the U.S., all the employees and businesses involved in exporting American goods and services to Russians.

In the scheme of international trade, Russian imports and exports with the United States aren’t all that big — 26th among all nations, $26 billion in Russian imports to the U.S. and $6.3 billion in exports to Russia.

But as the sanctions war escalates, more and more Americans will feel the effects. Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi won’t feel the effects. You will.

That’s what you get in any war — ordinary, innocent people suffer because of the egos and/or incompetence of their leaders.

Sure, none of us wants to see U.S. service members pay the ultimate price. None of us ever wants war. We know the cry: What if Putin unleashes nuclear warheads? Wouldn’t we rather have an economic sanctions war than a war with nuclear bombs?

We’d rather have neither.

But we know this: Unfortunately, the bigger war that is inflicting damage on all Americans — inflation — is going to take an increasingly devastating toll on ordinary Americans, especially as Biden, et al, continue to blame Vladimir Putin and deny their role in the economic destruction of Americans.

We’re sick of this.