Public knows economy tanking but Biden says shut up

President Joe Biden’s cratering poll numbers suggest the American public knows full well the economy is suffering under his watch, and now a well-known economist says the country is experiencing a recession after a half-year of negative growth.

Speaking on the “Washington Watch” radio program, economist Stephen Moore explained that U.S. figures released in April showed the economy had contracted 1.5% in the first quarter of 2022.

“In the second quarter,” he told the program, “the economy contracted by another 2%. That’s technically a recession.”

Economists define “recession” when there are two consecutive quarters – six months – of a declining GDP, or gross domestic product. So the U.S. is now in a recession, Moore was explaining, after the 1.5% retraction through March then a 2% retraction from April to June.

By that period of time, however, when the economists are scrutinizing the figures and politicians are casting blame, the public already knows what’s coming. That is because businesses on Main Street, and the factories in the industrial park, reached that conclusion months earlier because revenue was dropping and fewer products were leaving the plant.

The general public doesn’t need an economics degree to reach the same conclusion. Record-high gas prices are devastating everyone from the farmer to the over-the-road trucker, and that cost trickles down to the customer. On top of that, a 40-year-high inflation rate is shooting up the cost of everything from auto parts and electric bills to canned vegetables and a gallon of milk.

Biden denied recession coming

According to Politico, the liberal news website, Washington, D.C. knows it, too. “From Wall Street to Washington,” a July 4^th story begins, “whispers about a coming economic slump have risen to nearly a roar as the Federal Reserve ramps up its battle against the highest inflation in four decades.”

Politico points out that Biden told reporters in June there is “nothing inevitable” about a recession last month, but the story tip-toed around the fact the President was unhappy when a reporter said economists are warning a recession is here.

“Come on, don’t make things up,” Biden lectured. “Now you sound like a Republican politician.”

In the radio interview, Moore said the back-to-back quarterly figures indicate a “soft recession” but they do confirm, he further said, the economy is “not doing well.”

Layoffs ‘sweeping’ country

Another indication of a shrinking and struggling economy is unemployment. That figure was just 3.6% in June but Business Insider, in a mid-June story, said layoffs are “sweeping” the country due to a slowdown in business and increasing labor costs. Major corporations Carvana, Peloton, Netflix, Compass, Wells Fargo, among numerous others named in the story, have cut their workforce.

Several companies began layoffs in 2021 when their executives saw the economy was headed in reverse.

Moore

Glenn Kelman, CEO of real estate brokerage firm Redfin, said in a blog post he has stated in the past he would never lay off employees unless he had to.

“We have to,” he wrote. “Mortgage rates increased faster than at any point in history. We could be facing years, not months, of fewer home sales, and Redfin still plans to thrive.”

A 30-year fixed rate mortgage is currently averaging 5.7%, a rate not seen since 2008, BankRate.com reported this week.

Democrats being hurt, too

Moore, who is a senior economic analyst at FreedomWorks, went on tell show host Tony Perkins the American public knows the state of the economy because they are letting pollsters now how they feel about it.

A poll from The Associated Press suggests a growing number of Democrats think the economy is bad. A year ago, only 37% of Democrats said the economy was poor. Today, that figure is 67%.

Speaking to reporters in Europe last week at the NATO summit, President Joe Biden reassured them that America is doing great but the third branch of the federal government is letting us all down.

“We have the strongest economy in the world. Our inflation rates are lower than other nations in the world,” Biden said. “The one thing that has been destabilizing is the outrageous behavior of the Supreme Court of the United States.”

President Biden, who is 79, last earned a paycheck in the private sector in 1973, back when a gallon of gas averaged 39 cents and a loaf of bread cost a quarter.

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Copyright American Family News. Reprinted with permission.