The United States has lived through 14 straight months of higher and higher inflation since President Joe Biden and his economic advisors deemed the issue a “temporary” and “transitory” issue that would quickly be brought under control.
“I really doubt that we’re going to see an inflationary cycle, although I will say that all the economists in the administration are watching that very closely. As my colleagues have said…we expect somewhat higher inflation over the next several months for a variety of essentially technical reasons…but that’s a transitory thing, not something that’s associated with a buildup in wage pressures,” Yellen said at a press conference on May 7, 2021.
Two months later, in mid-July 2021, President Biden assured Americans that the recent price increases were “temporary,” and not connected in any way, shape, or form to his administration’s spending plans. “As our economy has come roaring back, we’ve seen some price increases. Some folks have raised worries that this could be a sign of persistent inflation, but that’s not our view. Our experts believe and the data shows that most of the price increases we’ve seen were expected and are expected to be temporary,” Biden insisted.
What followed has been a steady ladder-shaped month-by-month increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) – the national inflation measure based on the price of a weighted basket of consumer goods and services purchased by households. Inflation crept up 5.4 percent year-on-year (YOY) in July 2021, 6.2 percent YOY in October, 7.5 percent YOY in January, 8.3 percent YOY in April, and 9.1 percent YOY in June.
On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen expressed support for the Federal Reserve’s decision to double interest rates to bring down the “unacceptably high” level of inflation, and assured that the issue was the administration’s “top priority.”
Yellen echoed Mr. Biden’s claims that America’s economic problems were partly Russia’s fault, calling the inflation rate one of the “spillover effects” caused by “Putin’s war” in Ukraine. Yellen added that broken supply chains were part of the problem, and called on G20 economies to “make our economies and our supply chains stronger and more resilient and avoid the sort of costly disruptions that have driven up inflation in America and globally.”
Last month, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell broke with the Biden administration's "Putin's price hike" talking point, telling lawmakers at a Senate Banking Committee hearing that "inflation was high before - certainly before the war in Ukraine broke out," and that the phenomenon is caused by a number of factors, including supply chain disruptions, regulations that constrain supply, and "excessive fiscal spending."
June’s inflation rate hike constituted the sharpest jump since 1981 - the height of the "malaise days" of raging inflation, low growth, and soaring energy costs. The problem was ultimately resolved by temporarily increasing the interest rate to double digits, easing restrictions on adding to the federal debt, steep government spending cuts, and a consumer credit boom.