I've Seen 4 and I've Seen 8 (percent inflation), I've Seen Sunny Days and Higher Market Rates

 

I didn't know until today that old song is about suicide, heroin addiction, and a mental hospital. It's true. Here's an old NPR story about it, Fire and Rain:

Taylor wrote "Fire and Rain" in 1968. The song has three verses. One is about a friend who committed suicide, another is about Taylor's addiction to heroin, the third refers to a mental hospital and a band Taylor started called The Flying Machine.

Those are weirdly appropriate references if Taylor wants to be the troubadore for Biden's upbeat publicity event about consumer price inflation, which is currently eating away at the value of all your money at an annual rate of over eight percent. It's insane to deny that reality, but our government is addicted to spending, and we'll need to put the economy in treatment for a long time before it begins to recover. 

Biden, by the way, keeps declaring victory over inflation even as objective reality (and the NYT) tells us the Consumer Price Index has hit new highs and the stock market new lows.

Inflation was bad in 1968, too, at over 4 percent, but not half as bad as it is today, when we are seeing the largest increase in forty years (9.1 percent for the year that ended in June, 2022). 

Call me crazy, but when I watch the new-ish White House spokesperson, Karine Jean-Pierre (pronounced Cringe John P Air, I think), dismiss the realities of the latest inflation report, I have never missed Marie Harf more. 

Marie, if you're out there, please take a job at the White House and save these people from themselves.