BIDEN’S GOT NO QUIX FIX
Tilting at windmill power
If Sleepy Joe Biden just didn’t trip over every other word, he could be much more effective in his divisiveness.
That was the assessment after our president’s latest tone deaf, erratic, often nasty and definitely embarrassing display of economic ineptitude from a group of Wall Street execs I often lean on to gauge the pulse of what the financial sector is thinking.
Some of them voted for Biden; none of them could be characterized as MAGA-hat wearing Trump supporters. But all were in agreement that Biden’s speech Tuesday on inflation, and how he plans to fight it, was odd on so many levels — including but not limited to the bumbling presentation.
A few of them were even yearning for the good old days when The Donald was in the White House. Yeah, they hated Trump’s mean tweets and petty feuds with people who crossed him (either real or imagined). But at least he kept things interesting and at bottom his economic policies were fairly competent.
You really can’t say that about Biden. The most memorable thing about his speech aside from its halting delivery was that he blamed everyone for raging inflation but his own inflationary policies. Most to blame, according to Biden, is Vladimir Putin and his invasion of the Ukraine, which is adding to inflationary pressures because of the sanctions against Russia, a major energy manufacturer, is roiling the oil markets.
But those inflationary pressures were apparent long before the war. The White House’s green-energy policies began depressing oil supply and squeezing consumers at the pump just as the new administration went on a spending spree that goosed consumer demand for every commodity including food and gasoline.
Recall the words of Larry Summers, the Obama-Clinton economist. Summers, hardly part of the MAGA crowd, predicted long before the Ukraine conflict that the blow-out spending Biden pushed through a Democratic-controlled Congress would spark ’70s style price increases.
Economic barriers
Such economic illiteracy is scary in a president. It’s also frightening that the president’s inflation speech attacked Putin almost as much as his fellow Americans who voted for Trump. He called them “Ultra MAGA” or “MAGA Republicans” as if they’re some strange new species of animal that pulled the lever for the former president.
He lumped them in with equally abhorrent Sen. Rick Scott of Wisconsin (his words not mine; I know Scott represents Florida) claiming, falsely, that the GOP wants to raise taxes and allow corporations to have their way by not paying their fair share.
Funny, the last tax increase put in legislation that I can recall was Biden’s doomed Build Back Better multitrillion-dollar spending fiasco which would have primed our already sky-high inflation rate of 8.3% well into the double digits.
To remedy inflation, Biden’s is planning to go big in so-called clean energy (i.e., windmills, EVs, and solar) that reduce our dependence on foreign oil. OK, but when will windmills and EVs really replace what we rely on now for energy and transportation? Certainly not now as Tesla EV creator Elon Musk recently pointed out.
I can go on and on — Biden even claimed falsely we would have more domestic oil production, thus lower gas prices and less inflation, if Big Oil wasn’t sitting on licenses to drill. He left out how the feds won’t green-light other permits that are needed.
Some people might be fooled by his speech, but again, I couldn’t find any among my Wall Street sources. The markets sniffed out all the president’s absurdity by selling off the Dow nearly every day since he gave the speech.
Is the president a liar? Maybe, but he also might really believe these lies. And that’s terrifying.
Disney whirled
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis keeps notching victories over the woke Disney entertainment and themepark empire — which thought it was a smart idea to oppose a state law preventing children from being indoctrinated about sex in kindergarten.
And aides to the governor says he’s itching for more.
Disney’s opposition to that very sensible law for reasons only the most woke among us can fathom prompted the Florida governor and legislature to end the House of Mouse’s special tax treatment in the state. Lefties cried foul, then a lawsuit was filed by a trio of state residents who argued that somehow they were injured because one of the world’s biggest companies had its First Amendment rights violated by not getting corporate welfare.
Last week the case was laughed out of court, and DeSantis is still enjoying taking it to Disney and winning, I am told. Aides to the Florida governor tell Fox Business’s Eleanor Terrett their polling shows that even 55% of Florida Democrats believe kids don’t need to be lectured about sex.
“Of course we don’t wish any company to fail but weighing in on these social issues is just not good for business,” a DeSantis aide said.