Politico's sloppy economic journalism

A friend of mine sent me an article from Politico Nightly on the topic of the state of our economy. Saying that it's sloppy journalism is understatement. In the article, it says "RECESSION IS COMING! — You read it here first, people. Take it to the bank. The U.S. is headed toward an economic downturn. Because it always is." As i told my friend, there are 2 types of recessions: the type that's caused by the business cycle and the type that's caused by terrible economic policies. This recession is from the latter.

When you implement policies that cut oil production within hours of the start of your administration, it's going to create inflation and hurt growth. Again, that's what's happening now.

When Pelosi passed the American Rescue Plan and Biden signed it into law, Obama Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said it would ignite inflation. That's proof that inflation wasn't just predictable. It was predicted. The economy was already growing at a 6.5% annualized rate. Biden insisted that it was struggling. Summers was right. Biden was -- surprise, surprise -- wrong.

It's time to remember what Barack Obama said:

"Don’t Underestimate Joe’s Ability to F— Things Up"

Why think that Joe won't repeat that 'ability' while on the world's biggest stage, aka the presidency? Combine Joe's cognitive issues with his unflinching belief that he's the smartest man in the room and it's predictable that he'll have issues.

The main reason is obvious: Steady and significant rate hikes from the Fed often trigger at least mild recessions. It’s a feature, not a bug. Fed Chair Jerome Powell and his colleagues will never say it out loud. But they’d take a recession rather than allow prices to continue to spin out of control. The intent of hikes, after all, is to slow down consumer and business spending and thus arrest rising prices.

Thus far, Powell and Co. have been part of the problem, not part of the solution. Let's stipulate that the Fed continues raising interest rates. That doesn't mean they shouldn't have raised interest rates a year ago when inflation was getting started. The longer the Fed waited, the more drastic the inevitable rate tightening would have to be -- and the more harsh the effect would be on the economy. Sen. John Kennedy puts the wood to Joe Biden's posterior:

If we enter a recession and we don't change our energy policy, we'll momentarily get energy inflation under control, then lapse right back into inflation when demand picks up again. Momentarily decreasing demand won't fix the problem. It'll just temporarily ease the pain. A change in oil policy is required to fix this problem. Otherwise, we'll just be back into recession and inflation repeatedly.

We need the problem fixed. We don't need the symptoms treated. Finally, we need real reporting done. We don't need the WH talking points regurgitated.