Joe Biden’s government caused the prices of almost all products and services to skyrocket when it directly confronted the American oil industry from its first day in the White House and through executive orders began to apply restrictive measures with its wrong climate change policies and “clean” energies. He also returned the US to energy dependence again, after President Donald Trump had achieved the opposite.
Gasoline price rises despite record production in the US
Biden maintained his position until he had no choice but to reverse his own measures and then ask for an increase in oil and gas production after his failure to visit Saudi Arabia to request an increase in global production.
If the price of gasoline has decreased compared to more than $5 on average in mid-2022, it is because Biden himself requested an increase in extraction and processing. Currently, the United States produces an average of more than 13.4 million barrels of oil per day, an additional million under Trump, who was extremely criticized for his support for the national oil industry.
Right now prices remain at the same level, although the Federal Reserve says that inflation is now in that 3.2% range.
The prices of almost all products remain sky high, except very slight declines in fuel and in the purchase and sale of new cars.
In a hearing before Congress last week, the president of the Federal Reserve left open all possible questions and doubts to partially save his responsibility on the issue by stating that the “progress” to contain inflation in the United States “they are not insured”.
Legislators from both parties in the House of Representatives and the Senate called on Powell to present a report on the state of the economy, the outlook and the inflation crisis in the face of great uncertainty
Chronic uncertainty in the Biden government
Powell also stressed that “the economic outlook is uncertainand continued progress toward our 2% goal is not assured.”
It is worth remembering that both Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stated for a year when inflation was escalating every month that there was no reason to worry. Biden took it upon himself to say that the Republicans wanted to create chaos and called them irresponsible.
After a year, without any action from the government against the brutal rise in the prices of all products and services, Powell and Yellen accepted, very briefly and in large quotes, their serious mistake and in June inflation reached 9, 1%. Independent analysts agree that this figure was much higher, but such an announcement would have generated a tsunami of hysteria worldwide.
The price of housing, all insurance, food, appliances and other household goods, restaurants and hotels have not fallen; On the contrary, many continued to rise in 2023 and have not stopped, so it generates too many doubts in an election year in which the Federal Reserve, visibly aligned with the White House, refers to a distorted image regarding what the people are experiencing. Americans.
Consumers pay very high prices
Consumers have never seen since 2021 no significant price drop as if to affirm that inflation has fallen to the range that Joe Biden’s government speaks of. And the data may be “official”, but it does not match the reality that American consumers suffer every time they have to purchase products and services.
The Biden administration says core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, is at 3.8%.
“The housing index increased in February, as did the gasoline index,” the Department of Labor stated in its report.
Together, both contributed more than 60% of the rise in the general monthly index, according to the report. Between January and February, inflation rose 0.4%, also increasing compared to the previous month, according to Department of Labor statistics.
To curb persistent price increases, the Central Bank executed a series of rapid interest rate hikes in 2022, before keeping the band at its highest level in more than two decades of monetary policy meetings.
Futures traders assign a chance of just over 70% that the Fed will begin cutting rates in mid-June, according to data compiled by CME Group.
In December, Fed officials outlined the possibility of three rate cuts this year, but did not give a possible time window.
The large left-wing press in the US has been pressuring since the beginning of 2023 for the Federal Reserve to lower rates; However, there was no reaction to the lack of response from the Federal Reserve for 14 consecutive months and a price escalation that became the worst in the last almost five decades in the United States.
Currently the reference rate is at 5.25% and 5.50%.
According to the official report, one of the factors in the supposed increase in inflation was gasoline prices, which increased by 3.8% from January to February.
Prices in supermarkets do not stop and rose again by 1% when in 2023 they had the same upward trend. The prices of clothing, used cars and rents also rose, which affected the inflation figure.
But the question is: At some point between 2022 and 2023 did those prices fall?
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Source: With information from AFP, AP. and other sources.
