The Biden administration admitted on Thursday that there will be “several more months” of major inflation spikes as the overwhelming majority of Americans are worried about rising prices.
“We will have several more months of rapid inflation,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said. “So I’m not saying that this is a one-month phenomenon. But I think over the medium term, we’ll see inflation decline back toward normal levels. But, of course, we have to keep a careful eye on it.”
CNBC reported:
The consumer price index, which measures costs for a wide range of items, increased 5.4% in June, the fastest pace in nearly 13 years. Excluding food and energy, the gauge rose 4.5%, the fastest acceleration in nearly 30 years. Prices that goods and services producers receive for their products jumped 7.3%, a record for data going back to 2010.
However, top economists are warning that the inflation surge that is hitting Americans right now will last a lot longer than just a few additional months of surging prices.
“Americans should brace themselves for several years of higher inflation than they’ve seen in decades, according to economists who expect the robust post-pandemic economic recovery to fuel brisk price increases for a while,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “The respondents on average now expect a widely followed measure of inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy components, to be up 3.2% in the fourth quarter of 2021 from a year before. They forecast the annual rise to recede to slightly less than 2.3% a year in 2022 and 2023. That would mean an average annual increase of 2.58% from 2021 through 2023, putting inflation at levels last seen in 1993.”
Some Democrats have started admitting to their constituents that Democrat President Joe Biden’s policies may have caused the spike in inflation. “We knew that there was a possibility that this could lead to inflation … . I know it feels—I feel it,” Rep. Kim Schrier (D-WA) said. “We all feel it a little bit, that everything feels a little more expensive. On top of that, gas is more expensive.”
The administration previously bragged about saving Americans a whopping $0.16 on a narrow list of selected July 4th food items.
The Daily Wire reported:
The claim that saving Americans a total of $0.16 on a very narrow list of items is proof that “the Biden economic plan is working” is laughable. Inflation is skyrocketing, the economy has a record-high quit rate, millions of Americans could soon face evictions, and Biden has suffered numerous disastrous job report numbers. Gas prices are higher now than they were at any point under former President Donald Trump and are the highest they’ve been since 2014. AAA said this week that they expect “crude oil prices to likely continue climbing following the holiday and through the end of summer.” Top Democrat economists have warned that the economy is at serious risk of overheating and of inflation becoming much worse. Eighty-five percent of Americans are now worried about inflation. Top investors have also warned the Biden administration “just continues to pour more gasoline on [the housing market] fire,” which they said is “making inequality worse” because “you end up subsidizing the rich at the expense of the poor.”
Larry Summers, who held top economic positions in the Clinton and Obama administrations, said during an interview last month that Biden’s policies had significantly raised the risk of the economy overheating, which would “be hard to put out the fire without doing a lot of damage and causing a lot of problems.”