Are you in a late 1970s mood?
High gas prices? a very weak president who wants to be popular in Paris rather than defend US interests?
Inflation was one of the worst features of the Carter years. Weakness led to one world crisis after another.
Is inflation back?
Our friend Ed Morrissey of Hot Air has a warning for those of us who remember the Carter years:
"During the campaign in 2007-8 and just about ever since taking office, Barack Obama has attempted to disparage the boom years between 2003-7 as an unfair illusion, arguing that middle-class families didn’t experience real wage gains while the rich profited.
One has to conveniently forget the millions of jobs created in this period to believe that, but the issue is moot anyway.
As the Washington Post reports this morning, inflation has returned as wages fail to keep pace, which will have families pining for the days of the Bush expansion: Inflation is back, with higher prices for food and fuel hammering American consumers, and this time it really hurts.
It’s not just that prices are rising — it’s that wages aren’t.
Previous bouts of inflation have usually meant a wage-price spiral, as pay and prices chase each other ever upward.
But now paychecks are falling further and further behind.
In the past three months, consumer prices have been rising at a 5.7 percent annual rate while average weekly wages have barely budged, increasing at an annual rate of only 1.3 percent.
And the particular prices that are rising are for products that people encounter most frequently in their daily lives and have the least flexibility to avoid.
For the most part, it’s not computers and cars that are getting more expensive, it’s gasoline, which is up 19 percent in the past year, ground beef, up 10 percent, and butter, up 23 percent."Let me just add a couple of thoughts to Ed's excellent piece.
First, don't blame me because I voted for McCain.
Second, inflation is what you get when you spend money that you don't have.
Our federal budget deficit relative to GDP has gone from 3% under Pres Bush to 10% under Pres BO.
The bad news is that inflation is back. The good news is that 2012 is around the corner.
We can end the Obama years like we did the Carter years. Check out Tuesday show:
Listen to internet radio with Silvio Canto Jr on Blog Talk Radio
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