Analyzing Almanac's ace economist

Frequently, Louis Johnston, an economics professor at St. John's University, aka SJU, and the College of St. Benedicts, aka CSB, provides economic insight into the latest economics news. On this Friday night's Almanac, Professor Johnston sounded more like a wind-up doll filled with DNC talking points than he sounded like a professional economist.

The first question for Johnston was what led to the jump in Friday's CPI (Consumer Price Index) report that measures consumer inflation. (The CPI for May was 8.6% year-over-year.) Johnston replied "Two things. You mentioned gas prices. That includes anything that has anything to do with crude oil or natural gas and the other thing is anything that has to do with commodity prices, especially things like agricultural commodities. The war in Ukraine is affecting both of those things and as long as the war in Ukraine is going on, we're going to see price increases."

Next, he was asked about whether the war in Ukraine. Specifically, he was asked "Is that a legitimate explanation?" Johnston replied "Absolutely. We've got 2 issues that have driven up the inflation. The first one was the pandemic and the fact that we decided that we weren't going to let people lose their jobs, lose their incomes so we stimulated the economy and we may have done a little too much. But you can't know that. You can only know that in retrospect."

That's a line straight from Karine Jean-Pierre. In fact, it's almost verbatim. That's nonsense. Liberal economists like Larry Summers, Jason Furman and Steven Ratner were screaming from the highest rooftops that the American Rescue Plan would spike inflation. This wasn't just predictable. It was predicted. In addition, conservatives like Steve Forbes, Art Laffer, Larry Kudlow and especially Kevin Hassett predicted a major inflation spike. Nightly on his show, Mr. Kudlow reminded people that the economy was already growing and saying that additional stimulus would cause a historic spike in inflation.

Johnston was asked what "tools" President Biden had to combat inflation. Prof. Johnston said that he doesn't have many tools. That's semi-true in that he's got a hammer in terms of tools. I call it "Drill, Baby, Drill" and it would drive oil prices down in a hurry.

Let's be clear. this isn't just about drilling. It's about increasing leases, permitting and building pipelines. Biden won't do that because he's controlled by the climate change cultists in his party but that would dramatically change the inflation picture. Johnston also mentioned raising taxes as a way to control inflation but that'd drive the economy into a prolonged, deep recession. To be fair, Johnston said that there's no political appetite for a tax hike.