Sunday, March 16, 2025 Post-Ides
I subscribe to Paul Krugman’s posts. He’s a Nobel winning economist. He does economic analysis and translates it into stuff I can understand.
He put out an email today with a chart about inflation. See if you can spot the change?
This chart goes back 35 years. Infalation has been coming down until 2020 when it started to go up – slowly. Maybe, you remember the world was in a lot of hurt due to Covid back then and our lackluster response until Joe Biden came in and passed an infrastructure bill and other spending bills that supercharged our economy and was the envy of the world.
Krugman notes that the slow rise in inflation beginning in the first part of this decade was deemed acceptable because it was around 2% a year and wages were increasing as well. Slight inflation helps an economy and it helps to pay off debt, but a sudden rise? That stokes fears and people hold back spending and lose confidence in the future economic outlook.
Trump ran on the promise to lower prices and the lie that the economy was terrible. His minnions are parroting that lie. I wonder what they will say when the economy takes the nosedive we are undoubtedly headed for?
Me? I’m in a quandry, “Do I buy the Trump assasination coin, the Trump shot glass with a bullet in it, or the Tump garbage truck die cast model? All purport to show my loyalty to the country. Why can’t I get a Trump garbage tuck with Trump coins as wheels, and a bullet in it somewhere? Maybe it could be made into a wine cooler for Trump wine? Trump red wine – significant of the blood shed on January 6th. Cold red wine. So classy.
BTW I talked with a buddy in Egypt and he said not many Americans are coming to visit. I wonder why? Oh yeah, when you go to another country, like it or not, you represent The United States of America. I was asked what I thought of Johnson when I was in Europe back when he was president. And it’s been that way ever since. If they like our president they smile and repeat his name, if they don’t? Yikes. You never know if you’ll have to fight your way out of a place. Hopefully, ifsomeone is pissed off you can mollify them with words and get away. But there’s a languge barrier and this limits your conversational choices.
