It’s Official: The Biden Recession

BUCK: The Fed chair… It’s a tough day. What does the Fed exist to do? What are they supposed to be getting done as their primary…? You know that thing, “You had one job!” What’s the Fed’s one job? It’s really to manage inflation. That’s the primary thing. Have they done a good job at that? Does anybody think that the Fed it looks like they’re on it, looks like they’ve known what’s going on here?

No. If anything, politics have been driving so much of the economic decision-making in a reckless and an irresponsible fashion. And this was true during the pandemic when we had… You gotta know some of these numbers. It’s jaw dropping when you really start to pull it all — piece it all — together. “Between 2019 and August 2021,” this was in the Wall Street Journal.

“The U.S. money supply … grew by $5.5 trillion, a stunning 35.7% increase in only a year and a half, driven primarily by the Fed’s purchases of Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities.” So, the Journal “estimate[s] that by the end of 2024 the money supply will grow another $5.1 trillion.” We are running an experiment to see how quickly we can get inflation to go in the wrong direction, or we have been running that experiment until they finally started bringing rates up.

And now we’re in for the pain. This is all cause and effect. If you run up credit card bills, if you spend too much money on a credit card, in the beginning, it’s great. You’re like, “I’m just great! Look at me! I’ve got a new jet ski. I’ve just bought a whole bunch of new golf clubs,” whatever it is, right? And it can feel like, “Well, that’s not anything to worry about because it just goes on my credit card.” But, yeah, then you have to start paying the balance down — and if you don’t do that, then you have to start dealing with the 20% or 29% APR, whatever it is.

That’s how people really get behind, right? As you know, first thing you want to pay down is high interest things like credit cards whenever you can. But a lot of people are gonna be running up those credit card bills right now because of the overall trajectory of the economy. But it’s cause and effect for you as an individual. Why isn’t that clear at the government level as well? You print too much money; you’re gonna have inflation. Some of us were saying, including me, you can’t shut down your economy because there’s a virus out there that you’re not gonna stop anyway.

You can’t just send people checks to stay home. There’s going to be a hangover from this. Welcome to the hangover. You can’t just spend $2 trillion as Joe Biden did right off the bat when he comes into office in addition to I just told you about the trillions that were spent to expand the money supply. What did they think was gonna happen? That’s what I really want to ask some of these people. I want to ask Jerome Powell?

I want to ask some of these experts, what exactly did you think the result was going to be? You thought it wouldn’t be this? Remember, they thought inflation was gonna be — they told us inflation would be — transitory. That was absurd. They’ve also been saying for months now and up until the last few days there won’t be a recession. We are in a recession. And I don’t think it’s gonna be a quick one. I think it’s gonna get ugly out there in the economy for at least 12 to 18 months.

It’s gonna be a lot of economic suffering. There’s gonna be job losses. You’re probably heading into the stagflation that we saw in the seventies and the early eighties. This was preventable, but there were people in charge who make really bad decisions, and that’s the part of this that there has to be accountability for and they’re doing everything they can right now. The spin you will feel, you’re gonna get dizzy from it. You’re gonna get dizzy from it.

“Oh, it’s not really a recession! Oh, this is just… We’re on the right path.” What does the wrong path feel like? Someone should ask Joe Biden that. If this is the right path, what is the wrong path? How does that look — 15% inflation 20% inflation? I think, you know, if we turn into Venezuela I think we’re all gonna realize that we’re on the wrong path.

But what are our options? Biden told us that he would shut down the virus, he would not shut down the economy. Which one of those feels like it’s been more shut down, exactly? The Fed chairman Jerome Powell is trying to tell everybody that he’s not about to get into the definitions of this; they don’t make a judgment on that. But, you know, there’s some good stuff.

BUCK: They keep telling us how great the labor market is. I come across individuals all the time who are saying they can’t get people to do jobs, and so they’re limited in their productivity. Everything from people in aerospace and defense to restaurants to, you know, operating your local department store or drugstore or whatever. They can’t get workers. This is how the great labor market is supposed to be operating? And then you say, “Well, shouldn’t they just pay them more, they’ll get them?”

Well, they say they can’t. There’s supply chain disruptions. They’ve already had to raise prices. In fact, they’re raising prices some of the biggest companies in the world. There was a big piece earlier the week — early this week — in the Journal about that too. They’re just gonna pass on costs. You think you felt the costs already. More costs are gonna be passed on to the consumer. But what do you think the people in charge…?

What do you think Biden, his economic propagandists, the Fed chairman, what do you think they’re gonna say? “Sorry, we’re idiots”? No. Of course not. They’re gonna say, “Oh, this is great.” In fact, this was the best. The White House trying to tell the American people that recession… You think recession means bad things, but let me tell you, peasants, White House wants you to know, the recession is actually really good and healthy.

BUCK: Does anybody feel like this is a good economy? I would love that explanation from people that are just trying to pay their bills and have some financial stability in their lives. They feel like things are going well right now? A lot of people miss that era of the mean tweets or that guy that was in charge that they said was doing Russia’s bidding. Stock market was booming, unemployment, real unemployment was very low. Labor force participation… They keep talking about the unemployment rate.

You still have millions fewer people working now than before the pandemic. “Oh, but it’s a… Biden’s created millions of jobs!” Yeah. Just feel all that prosperity while you’re paying $4.30 a gallon for gas and everything, you’re buying at the grocery store is 15 to 20% more expensive, and your wages aren’t keeping up with inflation and, yeah, all that prosperity. They just want to evade accountability, folks. They’ll lie to you. That’s what this really comes down to. They want to evade accountability for their bad decision-making, for their belief that they know how to allocate the capital of the American people better than the market.

That’s what’s going on.

Now we’re all seeing it; we’re all feeling it.