Politics

It Turns Out Biden’s Economy Isn’t So ‘Cured’ After All

(Official White House Photo by Cameron Smith)

Fears of a U.S. recession cratered global markets just a matter of days after President Joe Biden declared the economy “cured,” with experts pointing to the lame duck president’s own administration as the driving force behind the turmoil.

Global stock prices cratered Monday amid rising fears that the U.S. is headed for recession following the release of disappointing jobs data on Friday. Biden said July 30 that he wanted his “legacy for Gen Z” to be that he “cured the economy,” however economists told the DCNF that the market turmoil was a byproduct of overregulation and unbridled spending.

Asia-Pacific stock indexes plummeted on Monday, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 closing down 12.40% in its largest single-day drop since Black Monday in 1987. South Korean index Kospi dropped 8.77%, falling so quickly that trading was temporarily halted to curb the selloff.

Major U.S. indexes also finished on Monday with significant — though more moderate — losses, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 2.60% and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq falling 3.00% and 3.43%, respectively.

Just six days ago Biden said he “cured the economy”… Is this what being “cured” is like? pic.twitter.com/M5xSUU6kCn

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) August 5, 2024

The administration’s Bidenomics agenda “cured the economy of growth and price stability, replacing them with anemia and inflation,” E.J. Antoni, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, told the DCNF.

“This entire chain of events would not have happened without the last four years of profligate spending that was pushed by the radical left,” he said. “Markets are beginning to realize that the tremendous runup in equities, and other asset classes, has mostly been a combination of unsustainable government debt and pure hope. We’re now undergoing the painful adjustment of reevaluating assets on a more realistic basis, and we have a long way to go before prices reflect reality.”

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated in 2022 that the Biden administration’s policies would add $4.8 trillion to the federal deficit between 2021 and 2031.

The unemployment rate rose to 4.3% and the U.S. added just 114,000 jobs in July, significantly less than the 175,000 jobs economists anticipated, the recent jobs report showed. Inflation measured 3.0% year-over-year in June, well above the Fed’s target of 2%, and prices have risen by over 20% since President Joe Biden first took office in January 2021.

The Federal Reserve decided to keep the federal funds rate target range between 5.25% and 5.5% on Wednesday, markingthe eighth meeting in a row where it has chosen not to adjust the rate. High interest rates increase the cost of borrowing, restricting consumers’ ability to spend and businesses’ ability to hire.

“The Biden-Harris record includes raising taxes; substantially increasing government spending, including entitlement payments; imposing burdensome regulations on businesses and ordinary Americans [and] increasing the cost of labor through regulation,” Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Center for Energy, Climate and Environment at the Heritage Foundation, told the DCNF. “Standing alone, each initiative is harmful to America’s economy. In combination, these initiatives have led to inflation and slower economic growth.”

Federal regulations added record-breaking costs of $2.1 trillion for the average American in 2023, resulting in a  “hidden tax” of $15,788 per U.S. household, according to a July study from the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The Biden administration completed 97 rules with costs of $100 million or more, causing a surge in regulatory costs.

“Biden’s claim from last Tuesday to have ‘cured the economy’ is one in a constant parade of lies from the mouths of Biden and his staffers [that] has undermined trust and eroded hope among some observers,” Peter C. Earle, senior economist at the American Institute for Economic Research, told the DCNF.

“Claiming that 15 million jobs were ‘created,’ asserting that inflation was ‘over 9 percent’ when he assumed office, and even stranger comments (‘We finally beat Medicare’) only serve to diminish the enthusiasm that would-be investors and entrepreneurs might otherwise have felt,” he continued. “The more frequently that Karine Jean-Pierre has to say ‘What President Biden really meant was…,’ the less some individuals will want to have any risk capital deployed with that administration in power.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Featured Image Credit: Official White House Photo by Cameron Smith