Karine Jean-Pierre Defends Biden Celebrating on White House Lawn as Inflation Melted Down the Stock Market: It Was a "Celebration for the American People"

After yesterday's expected "unexpected" report of another near-record month for inflation, the stock market fell by the greatest amount since the covid panic of 2020.

U.S. stocks nosedived Tuesday after a surprising inflation report showed prices rose more than expected last month.

Wall Street firms better start hiring some conservatives to balance out their dweeb cvck Yuppie liberals if they don't want to lose billions of dollars being surprised by all these "unexpected" events.

All three major averages logged their worst day since June 2020.

Technology stocks led the way down, with the Nasdaq Composite plunging 5.2%. Tuesday's session marks the seventh time this year the Nasdaq slid 4% or more, per data from Bespoke Investment Group. No declines of the same size were recorded last year, while 10 were experienced in 2020.

The S&P 500 sank 4.3%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average erased more than 1,275 points, or roughly 4%.

White House spokesdummy Karine Jean-Pierre defended Biden staging a "celebration" on the White House lawn, claiming the biggest drop in stock value since the covid panics of 2020 was a "celebration for the American people."

When asked whether the lawn celebration created good optics when juxtaposed with the collapsing Dow, Jean-Pierre brushed off criticism of the event's tone.

"Let's not forget the the moment that we saw on the South Lawn of the the president and thousands of get the inflation reduction act done was a celebration for the American people, was a win for the American people," Jean-Pierre told reporters during an off-camera gaggle Wednesday.

Gnat-brained thuggette. Go deny some more elections, Insurrectionist.

Larry Kudlow noted that inflation is spreading, and getting worse.

Today's CPI inflation report shocked Wall Street and the nation with a significantly higher than expected print. Pollyannas everywhere are painfully learning that there's no magic cure. There's no easy way out.

After several years of excessive federal spending, regulating, taxing and money-printing, the highest inflation in 40 years is deeply embedded in the economy and it is spreading. The only significant decline came with gasoline prices.

Overall, the topline CPI came in at 8.3% for the year -- food up 11.4%, even energy is still up 24%. Electricity is up 16%; natural gas 33%; new cars 10%. Even with the recent drop, gasoline is still 26% above a year ago. Rent is up 6.5%. Overall, services are up nearly 7%. Core goods prices are up 7%. Used cars are up nearly 8%. The so-called core inflation rate, omitting food and energy, has risen 6.5% annually over just the past three months.

In terms of broader measures, the Cleveland Fed's median CPI increased to 6.7% year-on-year and the 16% trimmed mean, which chops off the highest and lowest 8% of outlier prices, is up 7.2%. The Atlanta Fed's wage tracker is up 6.7%, but real wages had their 17th-straight negative month. In other words, middle-class working folks are getting clobbered, absolutely clobbered. They're working more but buying less.

Around the kitchen table -- grocery prices, home heating, air conditioning, electricity, baby formula -- all these price hikes are killing the middle class and then we have the unseemly sight of James Taylor serenading the White House in a bizarre celebration of Mr. Biden's "Inflation Reduction Act." You can't make this stuff up.

Note that food prices rose -- "unexpectedly!" -- across the board.

The only thing that kept this inflation report from being worse is the fact that we're in a recession, and in a recession, people use less fuel, because they travel less and produce less and ship less product.

So Biden's recession has stopped the rise of Biden's fuel cost inflation.

That is not a good way to slow the rate of inflation, though. A recession is not a good way to keep inflation down.

Grid notes that "inflation is slowing for the wrong reasons."

There's reason to believe that falling gas prices and energy prices will continue through the end of the year, which would effectively put a cap on any increase in overall inflation. But that's only part of the overall picture. One worrying aspect of this month's report was that "core" inflation -- the increase in prices not counting food or energy -- was 0.6 percent and is 6.3 percent over the past year. Some analysts had expected these prices to fall, and instead they went up.

...

In August, most items the Bureau of Labor Statistics measures actually increased in price, but things related to oil fell, as well as used cars, whose prices fell 0.1 percent. These had been major drivers of inflation since the economy began to reopen. Where there were price increases -- and sizable ones -- were in things like housing and food and even utility gas.

...

[I]nflation in goods and services besides food and energy -- whose prices are very closely linked to the global trade in commodities like oil and grain and are much more volatile -- would have to come down. This measure of inflation hasn't gotten close to 8 percent. It's right now running at 6.3 percent, which is an increase from last month's 5.6 percent annual rate. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expected the core measure to come in at 6.1 percent. This is still well north of the Fed's 2 percent target, which is actually targeting a version of this "core" price index.

Businesses can cut back on fuel costs in response to a recession by simply producing and shipping less, but families can't cut rent, heating costs, and food costs just by using less.

posted by Ace at 03:10 PM

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