This Is Biden’s Soft Landing, and He Deserves Some Credit
This Is Biden’s Soft Landing, and He Deserves Some Credit
The last time this happened, voters didn’t credit Bill Clinton. That may be a bad omen, or a good one.
The last time this happened, voters didn’t credit Bill Clinton. That may be a bad omen, or a good one.
If the stock market chose presidents, Joe Biden would be a shoo-in for reelection in 2024. The market rallied this month amid growing optimism about the economy, with the S&P 500 zooming 1.9 percent Tuesday on news that the consumer price index rose only 3.2 percent in October (compared to 3.7 percent in September). Stocks rallied again Wednesday on news that the producer price index fell 0.5 percent. Commentators are no longer debating whether the economy will experience a “soft landing” (i.e., a reduction in inflation without recession). The only question now is when it will arrive. The S&P 500 seems to have decided it’s already here.
But the stock market doesn’t choose presidents. Voters do, and polls continue to show they think the economy is in terrible shape. A Financial Times–Michigan Ross Nationwide Survey conducted November 2–7 is absolutely brutal on this point.
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The markets say one thing, but grocery receipts say another. Consumers are still hurting, and most choose not to look beyond today and their own pocketbooks.
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But grocery receipts are not an indicator of inflation, only of corporate greed and record profits. The Democrats need to a better job pointing the blame where it really lies.
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I think one caveat here (and I’m not disagreeing with you, just adding a bit of clarification) is that the grocery stores aren’t the ones engaging in this. Generally, they have pretty tight profit margins. The massive growth of Aldi and other discount grocers in the USA over the past 10-20 years has made the profit margins remain tight. It’s the upstream producers where you see more of the greed.
Most people reading this probably haven’t even heard of a company like Cargill, even though they control a massive chunk of your meat.
Edit: maybe I should have said they produce most of your meat (or the plurality, not sure the exact numbers. They’re the biggest in North American beef, maybe other meats too)
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But grocery receipts are not an indicator of inflation, only of corporate greed and record profits. The Democrats need to a better job pointing the blame where it really lies.
what do you think "inflation" means to consumers? it's the increase over time of the cost of the things they buy. Nobody cares if it's coming from corporate greed or climate change or whatever else. They only care that they've already been living pay check to pay check and now they're cutting back on food into ever more shitty options.
or housing. or any of a dozen other necessary-to-live things.
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The Democrats need to do a better job at giving people the money they need to get what they need, and controlling the out-of-control plutocrats wringing every last bit of spare change from the rest of us.
"Ok GOP, we'll cut our yearly deficit by 60% just by only giving the welfare queen confederate states $1 back for every dollar they contribute in taxes, instead of the $6 that South Carolina gets. Pull yourselves up by your bootstraps and start turning a profit."
"Hey, Joe Manchin: if you don't offer your full-throated support to Build Back Better, we're cutting off all Federal aid and investment in West Virginia, and we're going to run nonstop ads telling your constituents why. Also, we're going to break up your daughter's pharma company."
Time for some LBJ shit. But they'll never do it, because they're actually conservatives too.
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A lot of people want prices to return to what they were before the pandemic. But that would be deflation. While the prices would get lower, if you actually managed to push the economy into deflation it would be an economic catastrophe. And the lower prices at the grocery store would be little comfort with massive job losses and the economy in free fall.
What people should want is for inflation to return to its steady slow rate. Which it has. The month to month inflation was 0.2% compared to a month prior on September 2023. Going forward that would imply a rate of 2.4% over the course of the next year, very close to the 2% inflation target. For October the month to month rate was flat or slightly negative. The inflation number reported in the news always is very misleading, that tells you the total amount of inflation that occured over the past 12 months (3.2%). But it was actually 0 from September 2023 to October 2023. When people hear those headlines they think it means prices raised 3.2% again over the last month, which is not the case.
The remarkable thing is that inflation was slowed to this extent without the economy going into freefall with soaring unemployment or other problems that can happen with raised interest rates. They seem to have struck the perfect balance to wrangle inflation but prevent a recession at the same time.
Wage growth has also increased and is now growing faster than inflation. That's what you want! For the wages to catch up and make the higher prices a moot point. A deflationary spiral that lowered prices would be devestaring for the economy and most people would actually end up way worse off.
Outside of a socialist centrally managed economy with price controls and production control etc which has its own issues, I don't know how they could have done a better job than this coming out of the inflation problems created by covid and doing it all without going into recession. But the popular perception is just, why isn't everything cheaper again, I want everything cheaper again, must be Biden's fault, I guess. Even though things getting cheaper again isnt realistic, and would likely be devestating for lots of other reasons that would hurt people if it actually was happening.
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I hear about how deflation is supposedly the death knell for an economy, but have never heard an actual explanation for why. Inflation just seems preferred since it gives an invisible paycut to workers and allows holders of assets and debt (e.g. overwhelmingly the rich) to benefit at the expense of the value of money.
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The economy is not even close to being the main priority for me when I vote. I'm pissed about things like Roe and Jan 6.
And I'm pissed that the US does not offer universal healthcare, universal college-level education, universal PTO, universal family leave, etc.
You know, basic things in every other developed country in this world.
Zero chance I'm ever voting for a Republican. Democrats down the ballot for me.
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I'm voting D too for the time being, but the Dems are never going to give us those things either.
The best Dems will offer is BS like means-tested limited family leave if you work for 3 years in an underprivileged school district first and then apply for a special program that will offset 25.7% of your lost wages via tax credits that can only be applied to the first $34,000 of income including HSA contributions but crediting back via deduction the first $500 spent on diapers as long as the diapers were 70% manufactured in the US blah blah blah
This Democratic party does not want universal healthcare. At best, they will grudgingly support universal "access" to healthcare. They do not want universal free college, nor free PTO, because that runs counter to the interests of their largest donors.
The best we can say about the current Democratic party is that they will, at times, pause the active arson that the GOP is inflicting on this country... maybe, sort of. They could have added DC and PR as states in the 2021-2022 session and given themselves a fighting chance in the Senate, but I guess they just kinda forgot to get around to it.
They exist to be a placeholder for whenever the GOP loses power, and a continuous fundraising lifestyle brand the rest of the time.
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I think you're right in the issue, prices are higher now vs recent history and that feels bad, but there is an aspect to that which is more perception than reality.
Wages have been rising faster than inflation for a year and a half straight now, and real wages are currently higher than they were in Q4 2019.
So yes things cost more, but as a percentage of typical wage, they actually cost less vs 2019. Just doesn't feel that way.
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The Fed's job is to defend and grow the owner class's wealth at everyone else's expense, full stop.
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The problem is that Wall Street Wealth is not Voters Wealth. "Economy" has become "Riches Economy" - In a good economy, the rich profit more, in a bad one, the rich profit less (but thy still profit, if they are not terminally stupid). All the rest just pays for it, regardless in what state the economy is.
For normal people, the economy is, as always, in a very bad shape.
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This is high-schooler thinking. Yeah rich people benefit more from the stock market and are more able to weather the dips, but the overall health of the economy is still closely coupled to the average person's quality of life and employment opportunities.
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Wow. Someone actually bought the trickle down theory.
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This is high-schooler thinking.
This is dumbass level name calling.
The rich have continually asked the middle and working class to surrender everything over the past 40 years in the name of "economy" and continue to rob them blind.
Wake the fuck up.
God will not reward you in the future for your pittance, even if his name is "economy".
Most of us out here are one traffic accident or slip and fall from complete financial ruin and it's absolute bullshit.
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You just conflated the stock market and the overall health of the economy without so much as a hint of a logical step.
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Hahahahahaha
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sure, buddy, keep telling yourself that
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Is this English?
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Exactly. Your downvotes here only prove the financial illiteracy/intentional misinformation rampant across lemmy.
Not to mention that the average person should be putting their retirement savings mostly into mutual funds, so when the market goes up it should benefit the average person directly as well as indirectly.
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High stock prices don't get people food, housing or healthcare.
It's great news if you own a hedge fund, but completely fucking worthless if you can't feed your kids.
Any time someone talks about "the economy", you can freely substitute "rich people's yacht money".
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The main problem is, that most of the things you need to help people are in the power of Congress, not the president.
The first two years, Manchin and Sinema blocked meaningful reform in the Senate. And now there is a republican shit show in the house.
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And Trump, the self-professed billionaire who cut the taxes of other billionaires, is going to be SO much more beneficial for the middle and lower class.
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Or you know maybe we could raise the bar just a teeny little bit above 'at least he isn't as bad as trump'.
Yeah, neither is a shit sandwich and a rubdown with a cheese grater, but that doesn't mean you have to want it.
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I'm really sick of this line of reasoning that functionally goes:
- Look, you don't know what you're talking about, it's fine, everything's fine, and despite what your lived experience is telling you, you're doing great because just look at the charts and the stonks. Yes, okay, you had to cut back on groceries, but did you see the charts? The economy is doing great.
And when somebody says "hey, this doesn't align with my experience, can we just acknowledge that things aren't actually that great and work towards fixing them?" The response is
- Ugh, why would you want to vote for Trump?!
MF, I don't, but if the people don't feel seen by Biden, they might not vote for him specifically because of all the tone-deaf paternalistic "stop whining about my economy, you're fine actually" messaging. It's kind of a similar vibe to answering "can we not support genocide in Gaza, please?" With "why do you hate Jews?!". It's just an attempt to avoid dealing with legitimate criticism while deflecting it back onto the asker. The clinton campaign already tested this strategy in 16, and we all saw how that turned out.
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The Democrats' propaganda game is miserable in 2023. The big difference is that Clinton promoted himself effectively. Remember when George Stephenopolous called George HW Bush on Larry King's show back in 1992, just to humiliate him? Remember Clinton's bulldog communications officer, James Carville? Back in the 1990s, Democrats knew how to puff up their accomplishments and tear down their opponents. Now, they're too timid to try. Time to drop this pathetic facade of objectivity and civility and fight, HARD. Their lives as a political party depend on it. OUR lives depend on it.
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I never thought I'd see the day when carville is propped up as the paradigm of what a Democrat should be.
Bernie Sanders is what a Democrat should be and he's been fighting basically alone since the 60s.
You're right about their messaging tho. This is a direct reflection of rejecting the progressive wing which is mostly young people.
If the Dems would get their shit together and brace the next generation thos would be no contest.
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The Democrats have been bringing spoons to a gunfight since the 70s.
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The current Democratic party doesn't want to fight. It's pathetic, and it is difficult to vote for "pathetic" even when the alternative is... well... you know.
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You mean there is a flaw to the strategy of repeating, "listen, Jack, the economy has never been better, and you're an idiot if you don't see that"?
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y'all can quote me economic statistics all day, what I know is that in the last few years I've gotten two promotions with raises and I still have less left over at the end of the month than I did before covid.
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This is the truth. The fact that this is all due to inflation that was caused by Federal Reserve money printing during the Trump administration will be lost on most people.
Granted that was all due to COVID (and exasperated by ignoring it for a time), but still, Biden will be blamed.
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Biden does bear some blame though. He repaired the economy for the top 10 percent. Even an acknowledgement that it's not done or that Congress is blocking things that would help the rest of us would help him.
Instead it's another round of, "my rich friends are happy, why aren't the people voting for me?"
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Granted that was all due to COVID (and exasperated by ignoring it for a time), but still, Biden will be blamed.
Worse most of it came from over 17trillion given to the banks before covid during trumps administration. This started the inflation climb which was then exacerbated by covid and supply chain issues. And you have the cftc prolonging swap reports almost endlessly to hide short positions being built in equity swaps with those banks. But no one will look to the fed reserve because it was "Biden's fault" not wall street making bad bets again and getting another handout to balance collateral.
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Clearly a signal that you can switch jobs.
"the market has spoken" -
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Probably because 90 percent of voters don't live off of stock dividends or stock backed low interest loans.
Maybe it's time to stop pretending the stock market is the economy?
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I heard your comment in my head in the voice of Kai Ryssdal.
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I don't know if that's meant as a compliment or not but I like the idea of having a radio voice so I'll go with it.
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The "soft landing" narrative is settled? That's news to me! There were a number of things that people could point at before 2008 about how peachy the economy was... until it suddenly wasn't. I would be interested in hearing what specifically Biden did to create this "soft landing" but in general presidents don't actually have that kind of control, and tying your name to the market makes you more susceptible to its fickle nature. The numbers were doing well for Trump, and he wouldn't shut up about how he supposedly achieved it, until covid smacked it all down.
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Market is holding on for dear life, banks getting bailou- I mean emergency loans. Bond markets are shit, it's all just show. China has been collapsing too ever since evergrande went bankrupt in like 2021.
And it all started when they shot that damn gorilla.. drags cigarette
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He turned the economy dial to "better". Now if only he turned his gas dial to "cheaper"./s
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Stock market ≠ the economy
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In a just world the news shows would have a real income ticker instead of the Dow.
Or some other tracker that shows values actually relevant to the average American.
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But the stock market doesn’t choose presidents. Voters do, and polls continue to show they think the economy is in terrible shape.
Just be happy! The rich assholes who raised the price of everything are doing great!
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This is my happy face: 🙃
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I’m voting for that Dark Brandon guy.
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I'd write in dark brandon as a bit if joe wasn't running against the ronald mcdonald of fascism
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That is a wonderful description.
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Lets not forget that while the stock market doesn't define the economy it certainly affects it. When stocks are down, companies freeze or lay off employees, raise prices or change their products. Everyone's still complaining about grocery prices but the real win here is that it's not worse, which it was predicted to be over and over
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He does genocide BUT the stock market went up!
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One doesn't do genocide. One commits genocide.
Also no, Joe Biden does not commit genocide lol
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