The nation needs the Congressional investigations, but they are, I caution again, predictably un-strategic, even awkward. Republicans stupidly sold the hearings as conclusive (thus inorganic), accordingly seen as partisan payback, not transparent good government. Lacking choreography, they appeal mainly to a Fox News constituency, intersecting with a reliable but aging internet conservative donor base.
What about independent voters and anti-woke Democrats? They will determine next year whether Republicans in the House expand, and in the Senate (finally) regain, control; and, of course, the presidency. (Spoiler: Neither Trump nor Biden will be his party’s nominee.)
The assorted hearings, so far perceived as retribution and thus implausible, could still be recalibrated, and good for the country, in that way positive for Republicans. The electorate wants policy, not polemic. Accordingly, Republicans in Congress must exorcise caricature and instead be media-savvy, and able to walk (legislate against inflation?) and chew gum (investigate credibly?) at the same time; now, they do neither.
That brings us to last week’s failure of the nation’s 16th largest bank, the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), a consequence ostensibly of that bank’s trendy, irresponsible management. Yet, without the Federal Reserve’s abrupt switch from reckless easy money (zero Fed rates that for too long enriched wealthy speculators with supercharged asset valuation) to frenzied interest hikes (wreaking havoc now and yet to come), SVB (which imprudently invested in low-yield, long-term U.S. treasury securities that soured) would still be solvent.
In sum, ramifications go beyond the run on SVB by its high-tech corporate clients to the tune of a million dollars a second, and rather portend generic economic instability, arising from the Fed wildly swinging from monetary promiscuity to asset mutilation. The current “high” interest rates are not a historical anomaly, but the whiplash is economic manslaughter.
To paraphrase the late Lloyd Bentsen, I say to Obama/Trump/Biden appointee Fed Chair Jerome Powell: “I knew Milton Friedman, and you’re no Milton Friedman.” That is, Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman, the legendary free market economist and monetary guru who proved that (a) government, not the free market, is the source of, or exacerbates, economic instability — recessions and depressions, even the Great Depression. Friedman explained that (b) central banks like the Fed can be the cure worse than the disease. And (c) the Fed and its chairmen are inherently fallible, so that (d) Fed policies inevitably oversteer a roller coaster.
Friedman concluded that only a known, non-discretionary modest annualized increase in the money supply can reliably support a free market economy, without otherwise inevitable government-induced chaos. Such statist inspired boom-and-bust cycles and central bank pendulums led the “Austrian school” of economists (notably Ludwig von Mises) to question whether central banks should even exist!
Oil companies, insurance companies, Big Pharma, polluters and Norfolk Southern Railway are not popular. But neither are banks, and surely not the scarcely known and mystery-shrouded, privileged, and luxury-indulged, elitist Fed. The clichés apply: it’s time for Republican leaders to stop looking in the rearview mirror and think outside the box. That is, extol free market economics relentlessly along with a nonstop populist attack on the Fed and its monetary policy. And make Biden own the unpopular high interest rates, as well as Inflation, inextricably linked with his regulatory web, disastrous fiscal policy, and now his preposterous new budget. Pursue Hunter Biden, Anthony Fauci, Pete Buttigieg, et al., but at intermission or halftime.
As James Carville famously observed in 1992, “It’s the economy stupid.” Biden cannot unring the bell. He and he alone did something no one else has done in four decades: he unleashed the inflation genie, an inflationary neurosis, if not psychosis — the reinforcing expectation of higher prices, so everyone tries to stay ahead of the game, and cause-to-effect-to-cause. A Fed-induced recession will only reduce the rate of inflation, not return prices to the status quo ante. In other words, the cost of living in 2024 will remain significantly higher than when Biden took office. Get it?
It’s time for Republicans to get off defense, especially on Social Security. Why accept the terms of engagement dictated by the Democrats and complicit media? President Donald Trump should have done what President Ronald Reagan did and appointed a nonpartisan commission to “save” Social Security and Medicare. Republicans should propose this now. Republicans still can get off the hook by coalescing with Democrats to take Social Security and Medicare “out of politics.” Nor should Republicans keep debating the absurdity that they support billionaires paying little or no taxes. Why not alert voters that Biden’s tax hikes, especially corporate, will not only crash the stock market, reduce corporate investment in new jobs, make American industry less competitive in the world, but also increase the cost of goods and services to Americans — “inflation” as they understand it?
This economic matrix is not a one-time news conference, gone in a single news cycle. This is a unified, consistent, multimedia, war-room strategy that saddles Joe Biden “and the Democrats” with the albatross of inflation, high interest rates, and now, with his preposterous budgetary proposal for economic stagnation. It’s time to revisit Biden’s nonsensical, falsely labeled Inflation Reduction Act. Note that “and the Democrats” is profoundly necessarily dispositive, because Biden will not be the nominee.
All this is no easy task. The Senate and House Republicans include many Beltway icons who confuse the free market with the Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers, and who cater to trade association lobbyists. And on the other side are some so-called MAGA Republicans who are solid on many important issues including border security and a strong economy at home, yet are clueless about the need for legal immigration and the benefits of international trade, and they even call for a Biden-like national economic policy that is alien to a free market.
And, as many voters who also must be educated, some Capitol Hill Republicans do not understand the difference between the specific price hikes in the store, at the gas pump, and for certain products, all resulting from Biden incompetence, especially involving supply-side bumbling, destructive energy prices, and more regulations, versus the general monetary and fiscal policies that cause general inflation, meaning to inflate or blow up the money supply — more dollars chasing goods and services.
The Biden Administration must be confronted again and again with its overall fiscal policies that have caused general inflation, as well as its particular screw-ups and regulatory policies that cause specific higher prices.
Here are the examples of an approach that needs elaboration going forward. But remember that details and nuance, and staying on message, and persistence, all matter.
Let the House Republicans do their Hunter Biden investigation, perhaps they can find a competent committee counsel who can find the proverbial smoking gun and bring closure. But what Republicans really need to pursue is the crony socialism of the Biden Administration, the horror stories of taxpayer money going to subsidize and bail out favored industries, companies, and donors. We need hearings outside Washington to spotlight how Joe Biden and the Biden Administration are the main cause of inflation, through runaway spending, deficits, and regulatory policies.
Witnesses need to come forward with how they cannot afford groceries, pay rent, buy a home, buy or lease a car, how they are in more debt at ever-rising interest rates, and witnesses testifying about the effects of job-killing regulations, energy policies that raise the cost of gas at the pumps and heating a home.
And all of this starts now with declaring war on the sacred, independent Fed that is doing Joe Biden’s dirty work. Remember, a truly independent Fed would cite the inflationary effects of Biden’s fiscal policy and the need for him to reverse course, not double-down as he is doing. The Fed’s silence shows it is not independent, but political!
Some say President Biden’s preposterous new budget proposal is dead on arrival. But that death should be slow and prolonged, painful and humiliating, as a national debate that starts now and keeps going. Let Biden twist in the wind, while the electorate realizes 2024 is a time for choosing — economic growth without inflation versus a sluggish economy with inflation.
Biden and the Democrats equal stagflation.