Joe Biden is so mentally impaired that, when he says absurd things, it's hard to tell if it's the result of cognitive decline, outright lies, or a simple inability to know what he's talking about when someone puts a script on his teleprompter. Biden's most recent absurdity is so bad that it might possibly be the result of all three. In June 2022, U.S. inflation was 9.1% the highest in over forty years. In July 2022, the inflation rate was 8.5%, a decline from the June rate but still one of the highest inflation readings since the early 1980s. Biden might have claimed a little credit for bringing inflation down a little in July. Instead, he jumped the shark and claimed that inflation in July was "zero." You read that right. His exact words as reported in this article were, "We just received news that our economy had 0% inflation in July." Here's the real story. Inflation is calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) inside the Department of Labor. They report results monthly. Each monthly report looks at the prices of a basket of over 30 separate categories such as gasoline, food, clothing, travel, electronics, and so on. Inside each of these broad categories are hundreds of individual items that comprise what a typical consumer might buy in a particular month. That data consists of prices. The next step is to compare those prices for a certain month to the same month in the prior year. The basket of prices for July 2022 was compared to the same basket of prices for July 2021. The year-over-year increase in prices is the inflation rate for the month of July 2022. That's the 8.5% increase the BLS reported. (For calculus fans, the 8.5% rate is the first derivative of the year-over-year change in prices). Where did Biden get his "zero" data? In a desperate move to hide bad news by changing definitions, the White House looked at the price level in July 2022 compared to the price level in June 2022. In other words, they did a month-to-month comparison instead of the customary year-over-year. That's a change in the rate of change or the second derivative of the price data. You can rest assured Biden doesn't understand calculus or the definition of inflation, but he was able to mouth the words on the teleprompter. This episode – changing the definition in order to change the news – is exactly what the White House and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen did when they changed the definition of "recession" after the Commerce Department reported two consecutive quarters of declining GDP at the end of July. The White House policy is clear. If you don't like the economic news, just change the definitions to get whatever result you want. That's exactly how George Orwell portrayed Big Brother in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Biden's too dumb and senile to be Big Brother. Fortunately, Americans are not as dumb as the White House seems to think we are. Most Americans see right through the sham. In any case, we don't need the White House to tell us about inflation. We see it in the grocery store and at the gas pump every day.
Jim Richards
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