Remembering last November:

There is quite a storm a-brewin’. In case you aren’t getting the picture: despite what the Biden fluffers at CNBC and the Yahoo Finance page put out to cheerlead the market every weekday morning, we are heading full steam into the worst economy in 80 years. Most common people are already feeling (and clearly seeing) the effects of the first wave. …

While there is not much any of us can to about it, next April or so when we are waist deep in this abyss, remember the appropriate November 2021 headlines of “THE WORST ECONOMY IN EIGHTY YEARS” that didn’t happen. Acknowledgement and recognition of that fact now would be bad for the progressive agenda…and, more importantly, the investment portfolio’s of our beltway class.

Well, it is now “next April” and I suspect that – even though the additional trillions of debt spending that seemed to be in the offing back then didn’t materialize – the above outlook from five months ago was a bit too rosy given our overwhelmingly incompetent and corrupt ruling class. The best possible spin for our current situation was provided by Instapundit a few days ago:

RIGHT NOW THE ONLY THING KEEPING US ALOFT IS THAT THE REST OF THE WORLD IS EVEN MORE F*[***]D

But, if you dig down through the links, even that little spark of optimism dies rather quickly:

The Party’s Over

…It has been over forty years since the West has seen this sort of inflation. That assumes the official numbers are accurate, which is unlikely. In the United States, official inflation is 7 percent, but that is using the new math. If we were using the same math we did in the 1970s, then the real number would be close to double. …

[Emphasis added]

For the record, a source for that “math we did in the 1970s” is not provided. I do, however, tend to believe the assertion…and will do so until evidence is provided to the contrary. More…

… Since the invention of the petrodollar, America has been able to print as much money as it needs. The dollar is the default currency of the world, so those extra dollars always had a place to go. They would be spent on trade and then get reinvested by foreigners, usually foreign governments, back into U.S. Treasuries, which props up the massive spending by Washington. …

Since the Louvre accords in the 1980s, Washington has been able to swap securities for newly printed banknotes by the Federal Reserve. This would normally impose an inflation tax on the public, but the dollar being the reserve currency of the world spread this tax over the global economy. Inflation rates in the United States remained low, as long as global growth remained high and the world was willing to tolerate this system.

Those last two items are why inflation will not be abating anytime soon. … …the rest of the world is losing interest in the system that profits Washington at their expense.

[Emphasis added]

Just to point out the obvious, that specifically does not say “the system that profits the United States” but is limited to that special class within our ruling beltway. (The astute reader will notice that a complimentary statement would reflect much of what I have scribbled here at R> for quite some time: …the rest of the country is losing interest in the system that profits Washington at their expense. But I digress.) Now the frightening conclusion:

What this means as a practical matter is that the West is about to get much poorer and do so in a highly disorganized way. Not only will the standard of living decline due to inflation, but government spending will have to be radically reduced. The great welfare states and the American military machine were only possible when the cost of these things was subsidized by the world. The world is no longer willing to do that.

Western people are about to learn that those bits of metal and paper we think of as money are more than just a way to buy stuff. They are a store of value, and that value is the cultural strength of the society that issues them. The West has been in decline for a long time, but it was covered over by financial legerdemain. The free-money era concealed the great cultural looting of the West. That era is now over, and Western people will soon have to pay the price for it.

[Emphasis added]

The outlook is not good. But at least we have a top-notch team on the case. Right? Surely they are clear-headed and honest about the issues facing us and willing to make the hard decisions to lead us out of this. Well…

Biden’s lying about inflation — and workers know it

Nothing paints Joe Biden and fellow Democrats so out of touch as their lame rhetoric about inflation being “Putin’s price hike.” While the recent global effects have had an impact, rapid inflation began a year ago…

“Out of touch” may be manageable, but the laser-like focus of modern progressive ignorance is not:

…Joe Biden and his team are in total denial about economic reality and have no plans that will address the inflationary wave in any direction except to make it worse. That all but guarantees that the Fed will have to create a recession to counter inflation and stop a wage-price spiral that could otherwise set us up for years of stagnation. But even that will only go so far to address the corrosive impact of Biden’s spending impulses and economic incoherence.

[Emphasis added]

“Incoherence” is a bit charitable here. While it is doubtful that holding that seat at the top of the world economic food chain was going to last forever, maybe that position has been much more fragile than most of us wanted to admit for quite some time now. But the current demise…in the form of this steep nosedive we are now in…was a choice, all but guaranteed within the first 9 hours of the Biden administration. Moreover, in case you haven’t been paying attention, this departure from the slow, managed decline of much of the last century is the realization of the “fundamental transformation” barely hidden in undefined “hope and change.” Again, in handing the levers of power to the overt forces of Anti-Americanism nearly a decade and a half ago, We the People chose this demise. Biden is just the clownish puppet chosen to finish it off.

For the record, I would argue that “inflationary wave” is also a bit of unwarranted optimism for what is going to feel more like a tsunami to us in the middle class and below. Good times, good times.

There are now 1,011 looonnnnggg days left in the Constitutionally mandated Biden-Harris administration. May America get every one of those to the fullest…and emerge on the other side certainly bruised and battered but also wiser. (In the meantime, the ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.)

Into the abyss…

___   ___   ___

EXTENDED ASIDE

I hope you do take the time to go back and review the November 13, 2021, post titled The Worst Economy in Eighty Years referenced at the beginning of this offering. The key history review in the first half of it is summarized here:

…the 1991 recession. For those unfamiliar, that was a rather average 8-month recession that lasted from July 1990 to March 1991. (Note that the end of it was more than 18 months before the 1992 presidential election.) Interestingly, the official outlet for such things (i.e. the National Bureau of Economic Research) did not announce the end of that recession until December 22, 1992. (Note that the announcement came several weeks after the 1992 presidential election.) If you were politically aware of things back then, you will remember the Clinton Campaign, aided by the reliably Leftist media including the trusted nightly news anchors of the day and their near monopoly on dictating the narrative, took full advantage of this to hammer home the mantra “THE WORST ECONOMY IN 50 YEARS” for many, many months. Also, for the historically ill-informed out there, that reference timeframe meant something for a key voting demographic that tended to get more conservative at their age. You do the math.

The larger point beyond that was that the same media clowns that pushed that “WORST ECONOMY IN 50 YEARS” mantra then are now and will continue to be either silent (or much less “panicked”) about the modern economy that is justifiably now the worst in 80 years…and still charging full steam ahead in exactly the wrong direction.

Yet another example of the selective reportage by those charged with dispensing “approved-narrative journalism” only. It is not a new phenomenon. This is the kind of stuff that is useful in calibrating (or periodically recalibrating) your “fake news” filter.

You’re welcome.