1ºIf it were a good quarter, then article would state Hail to President Biden. For 2 years media has stated that President Biden was doing great for the country and jobs were at high. Jobs were higher then they were in a long time, except no stores could get any deliveries and shelves were still empty. The government blamed Trump and Covid. Two years go by and the same thing, Covid. Facts and what we were being told were not the same. News reporting, especially in California, that train deliveries are getting hit and robbed daily. The Federal Government unwilling to help or do anything. Oil and Natural gas being eliminated and prices soring. We maybe able to say many countries are hurting right now, we maybe able to say the U.S. President is a pawn, but we can't deny facts either. The further away from oil and gas we move, the more expensive society gets. The more we try to force electric, the more expensive society gets. I am not saying what and when going green means, just the obvious facts. Take blame when blame is do. We are cutting out China for China's goods and now that is supported even though that is what Trump was doing, bringing jobs home. Hypocritical. I am not Republican or Democrat, just find it hypocritical and selfish.
2ºAs you make your excuses for Biden, one of my favorite metrics, real median household earnings reached a 50 year high in 2019. It dropped $2,500 in 2020 because of the Covid recession. It dropped another $2,500 last year because of inflation. It is on track for an even bigger drop this year.
As for those observations about it's happening everywhere else, true, but what is important is the relative changes in the US compared to elsewhere. In January Europe's inflation was 65% of the US. And when you make those observations about the economy during the Trump years, remember to make the global comparisons.
Like the old joke, you don't need to outrun the bear, just the other racers.
3ºOh please stop lying...U.S. corporations bought back more than $300 billion of their own shares of stock in just the first quarter of 2022. Stock buybacks hit a record $880 billion in 2021, and Goldman Sachs predicted they would hit another record of $1 trillion this year. At the same time, corporate profits are at a 70-year high.
Here’s how the cycle is going: corporations have so much market dominance they can jack up prices and pass on higher shipping and labor costs to consumers. They can use the cover of inflation to raise their prices even further. That’s helping them rake in the highest profits in 70 years, which they’re not using to absorb higher supply chain costs or pay their workers more. No: they’re using their record profits to buy back shares of their own stock, artificially boosting their share prices and lining the pockets of their executives and shareholders in the process. It’s a direct upward transfer of wealth from workers’ paychecks and consumers’ wallets right into the wallets of CEOs and big investors.
Corporations must be held accountable for their price gouging, Congress must enact a windfall profits tax, antitrust enforcement should be a top priority, and stock buybacks should be made illegal again — just like they were before 1982. It’s time for the corporate looting to end.
4ºGayle Mitchell Well you’re correct on most of your comment except what Joe Biden can do. Biden has declared war on fossil fuels. He’s never hid that fact, his policies are what’s keeping oil prices insanely high. Also opening up the oil reserves is totally insane. That oil is for emergency use not political use. Biden has done everything to prevent drilling, including canceling pipelines, dragging the permit process to a stand still. Cutting off investments on future drilling. He broke the law when he stopped leasing federal lands to oil and natural gas exploration companies. It’s so obvious he’s doing everything he can to destroy the industry. Come on!!!! His policies are killing the middle class Americans while enriching our enemies.
5ºWell, you can blame Biden for most of this. He cut multiple jobs (keystone pipeline, not allowing oil rigs to lease on public lands, making it more expensive for Oil rigs to be put on private property, etc.), His absurd spending plans and spending while Inflation was high, printing money that has no value/flooding the country with excess cash, high inflation, poor reaction to Russia Ukraine war, upping corporate taxes, incredibly high fuel prices (effects truckers and supplies) on top of the shortage. Some of it is because the global supply chain, yes, but some of it is on Biden
6ºKassondra Mathis Houdek the “record growth” is the result of ending the covid restrictions and lockdowns. So yes, if you measure over the right timespan it can be called record growth.
As an example, suppose they made it illegal to attend college sports 2 years ago, then 6 months ago they made it legal again to attend. The athletic department of the local college could claim to have created exponential growth in ticket sales over the past 6 months... while technically accurate thats obviously not an honest way to describe things.
Kind of like shutting off a water valve, then opening it back up, then claiming you created a historic increase in water volume and pressure… it’s true if you measure over the right time frame.
7ºAnnie Thissell-Riley Trump did not want to lockdown the country. He wanted to stop flights to/from china, but was called a racist. Democrats locked down the country which hurt the economy, then are praising themselves for saving the economy and talking about job numbers when it's just the lockdowns being lifted and going back to work.
Inflation (in part) comes from the cost it takes to transport goods, in other words, fuel cost mean higher transportation costs, which are then passed onto the consumers. Fuel started skyrocketing when Biden suspended all new drill permits on federal lands during his first week in office. Charts for monthly average cost of oil from eia.gov reflects this. The US is the #1 oil exporter and can supply the US with low cost fuel as long as they are allowed to drill on US federal lands, which Biden stopped...
8ºAmy Fitzgerald the extension was not finished, but the pipeline itself has been operating since 2010. Biden ran on a platform to reduce fossil fuel production in the US...that's on tape during his campaign. He has kept that promise as his energy policies have been to reduce production (while begging other countries to increase). Other than a political gesture to release 2 days worth of oil reserves, what policies has his administration done to reduce the price at the pump? He blames Putin, but the price at the pump was up $1.00 from a year ago before the invasion. I see graphs of prices at the pump being higher in other countries. saying it is a global issue. But, compare us to other major oil producing countries and our prices are through the roof. Just this week, the administration resumed selling leases on federal lands, but with a major reduction of acres offered and an increase in the royalties companies must pay to drill. The POTUS may not control prices at the pump to a large degree but he has done nothing to ease the pain.....his policies have done the exact opposite.
9ºJohn Spinella You have a timing problem or you just outright lie.. Summers was a Biden campaign advisor and he had already warned Biden and Congress that the third stimulus was a bad idea. They sent checks anyway and then proposed a 4th, which got him a second warning. At the same time Biden was working on his Infrastructure and BBB which was insane, and thankfully BBB didn't happen. Summers' issue was not just stimulus, it was overspending in general. You can go back and read it for yourself. It's funny you accuse "you people" of forgetting the past when you were the one whose response to the link was that it happened last year so it must not be valid. Biden's polls are in the basement, you can't spin it anymore.
10ºMichael Dietrich Absolutely. The prices of crude collapsed in 2020 when there was a glut on the market because factories, businesses and schools closed. Planes stopped flying.
So OPEC and all the oil companies cut production dramatically to prop up prices.
Then in 2021 we reopened and a year of decreased production ran right into a year of pent up demand.
Supply and demand.
Add corporate greed ( oil companies are posting record profits), and now Ukraine and it's the perfect storm for high crude prices per barrel.
It's happening all over the world.
Biden has released emergency oil reserves, which is about the only thing he can really do about it.
It's restarting the economy from the pandemic.