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ABC did a lengthy segment last night on INFLATION!!! No mention of the real cause of increased prices (CV-19 influenced supply/demand), no mention of the fact that Americans - for the most part - can absorb the higher prices because they have more money thanks to various relief checks, just the usual hand wringing over how awful this is for Joe Biden because there is no end in sight. As usual, the reporting was shallow, leaving the impression that the goal is not to inform, but to alarm ABC's audience.

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Maybe Jill Biden should wear a smart Zara jacket that says, "I really don't care about inflation, do u?"

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I maintain that the media is rooting for a Dems defeat in the midterms. Their insatiable appetite for chaos news is a guarantee that the context of inflation will never become part of the narrative. People fear paying more. Inflation has been the cause of many an election loss. I just hope that prices drop by Fall otherwise the media’s omission of the global context of inflation just might work.

On a completely different note, can you imagine had Democrats submitted fake Electoral ballots as reported by CNN? It would be the nonstop story of all print and digital media. However, because it was the good ole Republican boys, it gets the ho-hum treatment. Fucking sick!

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When the Fed committed to massive taxpayer-funded bailouts after the '08 economic crash, bailouts that have continued mostly unabated since then and were increased dramatically in Fall of 2019, long before the first case of Covid in the US, it was inevitable that we would have to go through some kind of reckoning at some point in the form of period of inflation if we were ever going to get back to some degree of normalcy and balance in the economy. People should be thankful that all the other economic indicators are strong and understand that they will be able to weather this inflationary storm and come out better on the other side, with reasonable interest rates for both borrowers and savers, better pay and benefits, and a more caring and responsive President and Congress to ordinary working citizens, especially if Democrats can win a solid majority in 2022. The ONLY thing that would stop that progress from happening would be to put Republicans back in charge of the government.

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founding

Here are facts the media doesn’t want you to know (from Business Insider):

“The US is the only member of the G7 group of rich nations to have a larger economy now than before the pandemic.”

“ The US's recovery has been so strong, it's played a significant role in lifting the world economy. Healthy third-quarter growth in the US, Korea, Israel, and some European countries led GDP in the 37-country OECD group to surpass its late 2019 levels by the end of September, according to the report. Just look at how far ahead the US is in GDP growth.”

The article makes it clear that our strong growth is the result of our having much more significant stimulus spending than other countries.

https://www.businessinsider.com/chart-us-economic-recovery-beats-other-advanced-economies-gdp-rebound-2021-11

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The media refuses to self-correct, and I see little reason to expect this to change. What's required is a demand by consumers for contextualized coverage and an elimination of clickbait headlines. The passivity of Democratic leadership is maddening. The largely unsupported hysteria by GOP leaders caused the media to over-correct their perceived bias, and both sides/horse race beltway journalism became the new norm. The narrative will eventually shift as the 1/6 Commission begins to air public hearings, inflation declines as the pandemic recedes, schools resume, and prosecutorial decisions are made by Georgia's DA and NY's AG, the loss of abortion rights becomes 'real', but a media that fails to understand, much less elevate, the dangers of authoritarianism is creating the conditions for their own demise.

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Eric, thank you again. The context of global pandemic/global supply chain/global inflation is definitely missing from these stories with the 4-column wide scare headlines. And even if the stories did include the context, it would be buried on a jump page.

I keep returning to the mysterious belief that Americans have that Economics is a science, when in fact there is almost nothing scientific about it. At best we have some correlations (as noted above with global impacts), but rarely do we have causation which would imply a corrective measure exists. There is none (other than end the pandemic and people returning to work in shipping could restock shelves, but even that is only a best guess).

Our failed political press should contextualize this, but we now exist in an age of Murdoch-styled tabloid journalism. We’re being dumbed-down by headline writers.

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Jan 13, 2022·edited Jan 13, 2022

Apparently, if a Democrat is president, the health of the economy is not just judged by the stock market and unemployment rate. Instead, it needs to be judged by over a dozen various data points, indices, and additional analytics. Oh, and the shelves in some local supermarket in rural Oklahoma that have a few missing products.

Per the press, with a Democrat president, sure the stock market is up and the unemployment is down, also wages are rising, but you have to look at this data point regarding males in the age range of 21-25, with pets, living in these two states, that have high unemployment. And this local store was out of saltine crackers for a week. Here’s several paragraphs on why that is a disaster for the Democrats.

At this point, don't know what else we can do. Republicans forged documents for the electoral process and are now advocating drinking their own urine to cure COVID. But tell me again that the Democrats are doomed in 2022 and 2024.

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I read the Post piece last night, and in perusing the comments I was disgusted by how thoroughly the narrative has sunk in, that Biden is a failure because he's not "doing anything" about inflation or the pandemic, which sounds really childish to me, like "why doesn't daddy buy me a new tricycle?" The press is not explaining what is causing inflation in terms readers and audiences can understand, nor is it explaining the global causes. People don't realize how many consumer goods, auto parts, even food, come from far away. But despite that, the press has been framing its narrative around the "Biden is a failure" trope without a word about how economists warned us about the coming inflation as far back as 2019. Again and again, the media wrote about the effects would have on the economy, and the driving reason behind developing vaccines as soon as possible was not a humanitarian one, but economic - Trump was terrified that covid would cause the economy to collapse.

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First, when Steve Inskeep is a better journalist than 99% of the people in DC who cover politics ....

Second, on inflation, I asked a couple of people at The Times and The Post if they blamed Reagan for the inflation in 1981. I didn't get an answer. I wonder why. And the Reagan point is worth delving into.

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We can now count on the msm to omit context/historical backstories from their reporting

all the time. HELLO! We’re in a global pandemic. Duh! Nothing is nor will be the same as things were pre pandemic. Healthcare, politics, the global and US economy, the financial world, the educational system, etc etc. will not look or be the same. It’s the pandemic stupid. Every msm piece should include and return to that context in the lede and in every piece there after to explain WHY inflation is occurring just as Eric stresses and who is always on point.

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Jan 13, 2022·edited Jan 13, 2022

AWESOME summary/analysis- thanks.

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As a non-American, it's disappointing to read how your country's mainstream media (MSM) betrays its duty to inform & educate the public.

It's disappointing & frustrating that the "professional" journalists of your major media outlets have decided that writing emotionalized, sensationalized & clickbait headlines similar to the tabloid publications is the way to get more clicks & eyeballs rather than doing more contextualized reporting of the issues that's not always America-centered.

While they may not be doing "fake news" despite the claims of Penis Pumpkinhead, the RepubliKKKans & the right-wing media, the MSM is engaged in the dishonest reporting of the issues by the selective use of facts, and the lack of context.

Seriously, they seem to be more interested in pleasing their corporate overlords and personal financial self-enrichment over actually doing a public good.

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What we are experiencing is supply chain inflation which - due to the international means by which we fill America's shelves - is a global business problem.

But this is nothing new.

As I learned by using foreign sources to dig up details on Trump's international business dealings from 2016-2020, for some reason the typical J-school doesn't teach journalists that there is a world outside of America filled with journalists, who often are just as trustworthy and useful a source as yourself (or oftentimes better, as many journalists operate under a higher level of duress).

Here's a good Times explainer story on supply chain inflation, but as you and I both know, without the word Biden in the title plus something emotional, it's just not going to sell on the social networks and won't clickbait the subscribers into wonking out on a business to business problem that people typically achieve Master's degrees to learn.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/12/business/inflation-supply-chain.html

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Atypically for me, a little good news, maybe.

First, it looks like this period of inflation is already starting to subside. It follows, then, that the likelihood of inflation in January 2022 but not on election days 2022 will have little effect on the election. Notwithstanding the buzz, a spike of inflation is to be expected given the deflationary period following the initial outbreak of Covid in early 2020. There was and is no fact-based case that the current bout of inflation is structural and not transitory.

Now, back to my normal mode.

It was okay for Donnie to sign off on a GOP-supported stimulus bill because it was an election year and it’s always good for an incumbent to give voters money. Obviously, that changes after the election, more so when the incumbent loses. Now, with a Democratic POTUS, it’s a radically different situation.

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