Meme Of The Day -- The Biden Economic Boom

 

(click on image to enlarge)

 

See post below about the March jobs surge.

(h/t democraticunderground.com)

QOTD -- "This Is A Good Economy"

 

Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman:

“Let’s be honest, this is a good economy.”

So declared Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, in his news conference on Wednesday after the Fed’s latest policy meeting. He’s right, even if the public isn’t fully convinced (although the gap between economic perceptions and reality seems to be narrowing). In fact, Powell is clearly wrestling with a dilemma many countries wish they had: What’s the right monetary policy when the news is good on just about all fronts?

Contrary to what you may have heard, this is not a “Goldilocks economy” — get your children’s stories right, folks! Goldilocks found a bowl of porridge that was neither too hot nor too cold. We have an economy that is both piping hot (in terms of growth and job creation) and refreshingly cool (in terms of inflation)...

Krugman goes on to discuss the specific good news (inflation now at 2%, wage growth up, GDP at 3.3%, and the stock market booming).  He concludes by noting that, in our hyperpartisan times, President Biden won't get credit from the vast majority of MAGAt Republicans for any economic successes;  if they could undercut the economy like they're trying to undercut immigration reform, they would. So, says Krugman,

... I don’t expect Biden to ride to easy victory on the strength of economic success. But the economy is doing well enough that Donald Trump is back to insisting that the unemployment numbers are fake and claiming, ludicrously, that he somehow deserves credit for a rising stock market...

Having the flailing cult leader- before- party- before- country saying bullshit nonsense like that is the best indication that "this is a good economy."  Thanks, Biden!

BONUS:  A little trolling is in order.

 

We’re sorry this is happening to you, @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/8erZgRFPZ4

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) February 2, 2024

 

BONUS II:  Why oh why has the "Feels vs. is" negative public perception lingered?  Oh --

We’re sorry this is happening to you, @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/8erZgRFPZ4

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) February 2, 2024

 

 

To MAGA Patriots: "Go Broke Or You're Woke!"

 

We quote at length Rex Huppke who has actions for MAGAt Patriots to take as they see the booming Biden economy and suspect what's really going on: 

... It’s clear Democrats are manipulating the economy and making it the strongest economy in the world in order to fool voters into thinking Biden is a competent president.

Don’t believe me? If you own stocks or have a 401(k), just look at your balance and you’ll see EXACTLY what these cheaters are up to. They’re trying to buy your votes by putting more money in your pockets. That’s cheating. DON’T BE FOOLED!

It’s clear true Trump supporters cannot be party to this kind of liberal skullduggery. So in response to this distressing spate of positive economic news, I hereby call on all MAGA faithful to remove themselves from the CORRUPTLY BOOMING BIDEN ECONOMY.

If you have a 401(k), you need to immediately cash that out and either donate the money to President Trump’s reelection campaign/legal defense fund (he will give it back to you, with interest, once elected) or invest those funds in somethings sensible, like digital Trump Trading Cards.

Next, you must quit your job. It’s on us to help President Trump’s campaign by bringing those unemployment numbers back up to where we think they should be under an incompetent president who doesn’t know what day it is.

If you aren’t willing to quit your job, you must at least refuse any pay raise you’re offered. Only a squishy lib would allow himself to get paid more while a DEMONcrat is in office.

Lastly, it is ABSOLUTELY imperative that you not feel confident about the future. America is a terrible place. It is falling apart. The economy is in shambles and your personal economic situation is a garbage fire.

Darkness is everywhere. Living is anguish. All hope is lost.

Only by embracing these America-first beliefs, and believing Trump is the one person who can fix everything and make life perfect, will you be able to declare yourself a true MAGA loyalist.

So get out there, fellow patriot, and disconnect from Biden’s economy. Sell stocks, put your retirement money in Trump’s coffers, embrace the gloom.

When it comes to Biden’s hot economy, remember this: Go broke or you're woke.

There's not much advice we can add to that, except "Do it, MAGAts!  Act now! Your cult leader will approve and accepts cash, check or credit!"

BONUS:  Check out Simon Rosenberg's takes on the idiocy.

(Photo:  the cult leader will be thrilled when you pay his lawyers and go broke! / Matthew Putney, AP)

The Biden Boom -- Best GDP Growth In Four Decades

 

 

News that will end up buried deep in your newspaper and given 10 seconds (maybe!) on cable and the evening news:

U.S. economic growth accelerated in the fourth quarter as businesses replenished depleted inventories to meet strong demand for goods, helping the nation to post its best performance in nearly four decades in 2021.

Gross domestic product increased at a 6.9% annualized rate last quarter, the Commerce Department said in its advance GDP estimate on Thursday. That followed a 2.3% growth pace in the third quarter. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast GDP growth rising at a 5.5% rate. Estimates ranged from as low as a 3.4% rate to as high as a 7.0% pace.

The economy grew 5.7% in 2021, the strongest since 1984. It contracted 3.4% in 2020, the biggest drop in 74 years.  (our emphasis)

It would be political malpractice for Democrats to not hammer this into the public's consciousness all day, every day on every available platform.  It should be the first talking point every time a Democratic politician opens his or her mouth in front of a camera or mic. With Republicans and the news media doing their best to focus on crises!! like the (diminishing) supply chain issues and demand- led inflation (expected to decline to 2.6% by the end of the year), Democrats have to be their own cheerleaders on the economy to change the public's perception that it's being "mishandled." 

It's been the recent fate of Democrats to have to clean up the economic messes left by preceding Republican administrations. But we've done damn well at it!  We can't let false impressions of how the economy is recovering be the narrative for the next year, much less thereafter, lest we get another wannabe autocratic, trickle- down, plutocrat- led Republican administration in 2024.

(Photo:  Carolyn Kaster, AP)

Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

The U.S. and its NATO allies are responding to Russian thug Vladimir Putin's aggressive moves against Ukraine:

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin briefed President Joe Biden on Saturday about U.S. options for responding if Russia invades Ukraine, as well as options for U.S. military movements in advance of an invasion, according to a defense official and a senior administration official.

Among the options presented for the U.S. military in advance of an invasion were bomber flights over the region, ship visits into the Black Sea and the moving of troops and some equipment from other parts of Europe into Poland, Romania and other countries neighboring Ukraine. 

Austin presented options to reassure NATO allies and reinforce their defenses, specifically the defenses of those countries bordering Ukraine, the officials said. The goal is to show unity and strength among NATO and deter Russian aggression against allies in the region, the officials said. 

NATO said Monday that it was sending ships and fighter jets to eastern Europe and that the U.S. "has also made clear that it is considering increasing its military presence in the eastern part of the Alliance."

There's another option under consideration as well that could cripple Putin's economy:

The Biden administration is threatening to use a novel export control to damage strategic Russian industries, from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to civilian aerospace, if Moscow invades Ukraine, administration officials say.

The administration may also decide to apply the control more broadly in a way that would potentially deprive Russian citizens of some smartphones, tablets and video game consoles, said the officials.

Such moves would expand the reach of U.S. sanctions beyond financial targets to the deployment of a weapon used only once before — to nearly cripple the Chinese tech giant Huawei.

The weapon, known as the foreign direct product rule, contributed to Huawei suffering its first-ever annual revenue drop, a stunning collapse of nearly 30 percent last year.

The attraction of using the foreign direct product rule derives from the fact that virtually anything electronic these days includes semiconductors, the tiny components on which all modern technology depends, from smartphones to jets to quantum computers — and that there is hardly a semiconductor on the planet that is not made with U.S. tools or designed with U.S. software. And the administration could try to force companies in other countries to stop exporting these types of goods to Russia through this rule.

The Philadelphia Inquirer's Will Bunch wonders if America will hold Trump accountable, or be too exhausted to save its democracy:

... In a year when the fate of U.S. democracy is at least competing with the price of burritos and mask mandates in public schools for the attention of voters, there is the very real possibility of learning in prime time that our president was a crook — and then doing nothing. And that feels like it could be the actual fatal blow for our American Experiment.

Let’s face it, either way it will not be pretty, nor will it go down as smoothly as Watergate, with pundits crowing that “the system worked.” If Trump is indicted for his crimes, it’s not a wild fantasy to imagine a Jan. 6-level response, especially with the added gasoline of racism against the prosecutors in Fulton County, Manhattan and New York State who all happen to be Black Democrats. If, for example, that grand jury in Atlanta does charge Trump, it’s not hard to think that caravans of GOP voters from the red-clay foothills of Georgia or Alabama will pour into the cosmopolitan city to block his arraignment. It’s possible to see the blueprints of a true civil war.

And yet the much greater fear is that — after an ex-president’s efforts to block the peaceful transfer of power and stage the first real coup in American history is laid out in chapter and verse — a depressed, divided and utterly demoralized nation elects to do absolutely nothing about it. That, too exhausted to make the hard choices to save our democracy, we will simply wait for the comet to strike.

Robert Shapiro writes about the Biden economic boom that's being overshadowed by inflation and the pandemic, which are intertwined with each other but are receding:

People who quit in 2021 generally found new positions much faster than normal. The number of open jobs waiting to be filled averaged 9.6 million per month in 2021, 47 percent higher than the average for 2015 to 2019. Those openings outpaced the high levels of quits by 70 percent. As a result, the median length of unemployment fell from 18.4 weeks in January 2021 to 12.4 weeks by December.

The current employment boom is fueled by a highly successful economy and soaring rates of business creation. The Census Bureau reports that Americans created nearly 5.4 million private businesses in 2021—68 percent higher than the average of 3.2 million per year from 2015 to 2019. This historic level of business formation helped make the record level of quits possible, including those who left their jobs to start their own business. It also should help sustain healthy job gains throughout 2022.

In every recent period, some laid-off workers start their own businesses, often by necessity rather than choice. And they are a small piece of current business formation: All told, 16.7 million people lost their jobs in 2021, compared to 47 million who left their jobs voluntarily. 

All of these factors contributed to the strongest job growth in more than 40 years. In 2021, the economy added 6.4 million jobs—a gain of 4.5 percent, or more than three times the average job growth of 1.4 percent from 2015 to 2019. [snip]

...[M]ost economists expect inflation to recede in the coming months. The bond market is not panicking. But we haven’t seen inflation tied to supply-chain problems since 1946–47, so those predictions may be off. If they’re right and inflation ebbs, the sharp increase in wages before inflation will be permanent, since companies know that wage cuts inspire more quits and destroy morale for those who stay. The result would be the strongest GDP growth in a generation, fast-rising new businesses, a red-hot labor market, and real wage gains for most Americans.

There's much more at the links that deserves a read.

Finally, Infidel 753 has identified a slew of links to posts from around the internet for your perusal. They're always varied and interesting selections, and this week is no exception.