A Rose-Colored View of a Damaged Economy
LeAnn
Mon, 12/19/2022 – 15:31
This past week Janet Yellen, President Biden’s treasury secretary, offered her rosy year-end evaluation of the economy in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece titled “Biden Has the Economy Back on Track.” Her account comes just as the stock market has turned in its weakest performance in years, with huge losses recorded by such tech stalwarts as Amazon, Google, and Meta. It should be no surprise that her op-ed generated more than 2,500 tart responses, which overwhelmingly condemned her for being out of sync with today’s basic economic facts. Sadly, her many critics have reason to assume that the anticipated continuation of Bidenomics into 2023 will probably make matters worse.
Yellen blames the challenges facing the United States on two forces beyond its control: the “once-in-a-century pandemic” and the brutal and lengthy war in Ukraine. However, while the pandemic and the Russo-Ukrainian war limit what can be done, Biden still had, and continues to have, many options to mitigate these harms. Yet in responding to these harms, almost invariably he has chosen the wrong course.
The COVID Conundrum
Thus, on COVID-19, Yellen does not mention, let alone discuss, any specific …read more
Source:: Hoover Institution