Kerby Anderson

The US economy is not in good shape, and inflation hasn’t been this high since 1982. You wouldn’t expect to hear so many pundits try to convince you that everything is just fine. But that is just what we have seen from the establishment media, along with some economic cheerleaders on financial shows.

Charles Cooke provides a list of these cheerleaders, from writers at the New York Times and the Washington Post to broadcasters at MSNBC and CNBC. But he also includes his admiration for David Leonhardt, writing in the New York Times, who acknowledges that “Americans think the economy is in rough shape because the economy is in rough shape.”

To be fair, some economic indicators like a significant increase in stock prices and a growing GDP do look good. But you know something isn’t quite right when a tweet thanks the president for gas prices going down two cents in two weeks.

On the other hand, meat prices are up 16 percent over 12 months, used car prices up 31.4 percent, and energy up 33.3 percent. As I have mentioned in previous commentaries, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) does not evaluate the same basket of goods as it did decades ago and tends to low-ball such things as housing costs.

Over the last few months, we have seen government officials tell us that inflation is insignificant and then tell us it is transitory. Even now we have pundits and politicians trying to tell us that everything is fine. The government has been expanding the money supply since 2009 but vastly expanded the money supply these last two years. Inflation is the natural result.

These economic cheerleaders tell us nothing is wrong. I think the American people who buy groceries and pay bills know better.