May 17, 2024
This week on the Peter Schiff Show, Peter covers a week of dismal economic reports. Both jobless claims and consumer sentiment came in worse than expected last week, with both figures missing predictions by a wide margin. Peter also discusses public statements made by both Joe Biden and Donald Trump on the nature and origin of inflation.
The Fed faces a difficult choice. Does it prioritize fighting inflation or keep rates low for consumers?
"If Powell looks at these numbers and decides we need to raise rates because consumers are worried and they're pessimistic about inflation, that's going to make the high-interest rate problem worse. Consumers are upset about both high inflation and high interest rates. So how is the Fed going to do something about that? Because if it raises interest rates, it's going to make that problem worse. And if it doesn't raise interest rates, or cuts interest rates, it's going to make the inflation problem worse."
In a recent interview, President Biden took to blaming private companies for inflation. Peter explains how absurd this explanation is:
"He immediately changed the subject to shrinkflation and then started blaming greedy corporations. And he said, 'We have a problem of corporate greed. That's why everything is so expensive now.' As if corporations weren't greedy until Joe Biden became president. All of a sudden, Biden's president and these corporations decide, 'You know, let's stick it to the consumer. We can make some extra money if we really jack up the price of food.' Where were all these greedy corporate officers a few years back?"
Peter rebuts Biden further. If anything, corporations initially took losses in the hopes that inflation was temporary:
"Inflation is driving up the cost of doing business, and so to stay in business, companies have no choice but to raise prices. And they're all raising prices because they're all facing rising costs. So it's not greed. It's got nothing to do with greed! In fact, and I've pointed this out from the beginning, corporations were reluctant to raise prices originally because they were hoping it was transitory. They were being told it was transitory.... That's why a lot of those consumer type companies were originally taking some earnings hits- because their costs were going up and they weren't raising prices."
He also gives his thoughts on a recently viral clip of Jared Bernstein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, bumbling through an explanation of government debt. Such a council is completely unnecessary and arguably harmful to the economy:
"If I was ever to be president of the United States, I would fire all of the economic advisors. I wouldn't even want any. I would just save the taxpayers the money and get rid of them all. We didn't even have the Presidential Council of Economic Advisors until 1946.... You may want to ask yourself, well, how did America make it for over 150 years? That we had 32 presidents who didn't have any economic advisors. Yet we did fine! We got to 1946. We went through the Second World War. I would argue that the economy did much better before presidents had any economic advice."
Biden and Bernstein are clueless when it comes to monetary policy, but Trump isn't perfect either:
"He's blaming [inflation] all on Biden. It's not all Biden. A lot of the inflation that we're dealing with has its origins in Trump because huge deficit spending happened. All of the COVID stimulus money, the whole idea that people should stop working but spend more-that started with Trump, it just was expanded with Biden. And all of this operates with a lag. So there was a huge inflation tax when Trump was president. You know, he was bragging during this speech about his huge tax cuts that were bigger than Ronald Reagan's. But the problem with these huge tax cuts is that they didn't come with huge spending cuts. They came with spending increases.... So Donald Trump imposed an inflation tax."
There aren't any major politicians who take inflation and government debt seriously enough:
"You can't talk about inflation and be critical of inflation unless you're going to propose real solutions. Now, I guess Donald Trump is a better politician than to want to propose real solutions because that's going to piss somebody off. No, he'd rather say, 'Social Security is not going to get touched. Medicare is not going to get touched. And I'm going to cut your taxes.' Well, that just means we're going to have a lot more inflation. And that's what I've been saying. Doesn't matter!"
This originally appeared on SchiffGold.com.