Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to (expletive) things up.” President Barack Obama, stated as an aside to a Democratic official in Iowa (2020)
Roman emperors faced with falling popularity and civic discontent often turned to reducing the silver content of the Roman denarius. With less silver they were able to mint more of these (debased) coins. With more (inflated) denarii they could spend lavishly on public give-aways, like “free bread and circuses”. These “free” government outlays may have distracted the plebeians and protected the emperors from being replaced. But it was a fraught and dangerous policy, because more money in circulation led to hated inflation which encouraged even more discontent. Does this sound familiar?
Today (June 12, 2022) hated inflation has caused USA gasoline prices to reach a national average of $5.01 per gallon for the first time ever!! The May, 2022 Consumer Price Index (CPI) revealed that US inflation has risen to 8.6%—-the highest in 41 years. The 8.6% value is a government estimate—-but many things we purchase today costs much more. For example: fuel oil has risen 107% over the last 12 months, food is 12% higher, natural gas 30%, used cars 16%, and yes, gasoline has surged 49% over what we paid last year We didn't need government informing us on that. We all know it costs more than $80 bucks for a fill up, when only a year ago we were paying $40 bucks for the same amount of gasoline.
How did inflation get so bad, so fast? Three ways: 1. Biden dumped trillions of dollars into an overheated economy. That caused inflation. 2. Biden cut domestic oil production which raised prices on oil- a nearly universally used commodity. That caused inflation. 3. Biden first ignored the Ukraine conflict, then encouraged it, then exacerbated the effects of Russia-Ukraine war by scattershot sanction policies that intensified inflationary pressures and hurt us more than the Russians.
The Two Trillion Dollar Dump.
Our President was elected in 2020 in a tight race with a razor thin margin, and no real “mandate” yet he imprudently decided to “go for big and bold economic policies” with multi-trillion dollar spending bills. President Biden unwisely pumped $2 trillion dollars into an already overcharged economy, at a time when the nation was reeling from pandemic-imposed scarcities. That flood of trillions of government dollars initiated a US inflationary spiral which caused gas prices to hit the $5.01 buck per gallon mark today. But as Obama predicted, don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to “mess” things up.
Undermining US Petrol Industry.
On his first days in office, President Biden, as a captive of the “green” ideologues, and eco-fanatics in his Administration, unwisely and precipitously “cut the legs” from under the formerly healthy and robust US fossil fuel industry. He abandoned a partly built Canadian oil pipeline, cut fuel contracts, eliminated oil leases on federal lands, made fracking more difficult, and increased many fossil fuel regulations. He used the bully pulpit to inform the nation, and the petroleum industry (and its investors) that he—the President of the USA—was “going to end our dependence on petrol and make the nation green”.
These precipitous and intemperate acts cut into fossil fuel investments and curtailed production immediately. As a result of scarcity and high demand, the price of crude oil increased from $40 dollars per barrel when Joe took office, to $85 dollars a few months later, and today has risen to $115 dollars. Virtually all transportation, truck, rail, and ship transport depend on diesel fuel. Farmers plow their fields and harvest their crops with diesel. We use fossil fuels to produce agricultural fertilizers, and to dry and store grain crops. All construction vehicles run on it. Almost all food, and other deliveries are dependent on vehicles driven by internal combustion engines which need fossil fuels. Even most service industries are petrol dependent. The high-cost of this universally used commodity —heating fuel-oil, gasoline, diesel, —contributed to higher costs for all goods and services—that is classic inflation!.
Encouraging the War in Ukraine
First impressions stick in observers’ (and voter’s) minds. And Joe’s first impression as our new US President was drastically marred by the deadly disaster he and his incompetent staff staged during the chaotic, deadly, and nationally embarrassing US military withdrawal from Afghanistan..
The scarring disaster of Afghanistan cast a pall of weakness and incompetence over the Biden Administration. To overcome the awful discomfit of the Afghanistan fiasco he turned to an attempt to win back his “tough guy spurs’ in far off Ukraine. There another problem loomed, a simmering border conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Perhaps President Biden fantasized that a “tough stand” against Russia—a nation both US political parties habitually see as a politically useful “punching bag”— might act to bolster his falling approval polls and help to modulate or alter growing US public opinion that had come to believe that Biden was an incompetent and weak leader.
The Russians naturally objected to the US policy of arming and militarizing Ukraine and attempted to draw the US into negotiations to end their policy. But Biden ignored the threats and shunned negotiations. Instead he permitted Ukraine’s novice leader to set the agenda. Biden was drawn into the role as supporter and facilitator of a conflict that could have been avoided. His support only helped extend its duration and the destruction and death. Only weak leaders permit this to happen. The result—-a deadly military conflict which has caused untold destruction, thousands of deaths, millions displaced in Ukraine and abroad, and a human and national tragedy for Ukraine and its western neighbors. The war is a powder keg in Central Europe with the potential to lead into a wider —perhaps nuclear war.
Biden’s strategy to hurt Russia (seen as the aggressor) was to impose sanctions and cut imports of Russian oil, and force similar policies on Europe, But this “self harming” policy only intensified world fuel shortages in the USA and the west, increased interruptions and scarcity of other commodities and intensified the inflationary spiral that he himself helped initiate in the USA.
His intemperate acts in economics and foreign policy seem to have metastasized like a cancer from the USA into a world wide economic decline—a possible world recession—, with fuel and petrol shortages, a dangerous fertilizer scarcity, a war in Central Europe, the interruption of grain harvests from Russia and Ukraine (claimed as potential cause of food insecurity) and perhaps famine in many parts of the third world.
It is a sad and difficult revelation, that an American is forced to face—the extent of the disaster this one man has caused….to have produced so much chaos and economic hardship..in his own nation and in the wider world.
But we can go back to President Obama’s prescient warning in 2020: “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to “-——” things up.”
(For a intriguing example of how interconnected we all are economically, the recent scarcity and high price of menstrual pads and tampons in the USA, has been attributed to shortages of plastics and cotton.The latter shortages is claimed to be related to scarce Russian fertilizer which is heavily used on cotton crops over large areas of the world.)
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