The Homa Files

“Don’t blame me, blame the Pandemic and Putin”
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OK, I paraphrased the 2nd quote a bit, but that’s the gist of Team Biden’s “message” as it is stumping hard this week to let Americans know that Joe’s economic plan is working splendidly …. and that any perceptions of a bad economy are simply that: “perceptions”.

Today, let’s look at the Biden’s lead assertion … that inflation isn’t isolated to the U.S. … it’s a worldwide problem.

He implies — and sometimes says — that’s proof positive that his policies have nothing to do with the problem.

Really?

True, inflation is evident in the major OECD countries — Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the UK — but there’s a “but” … and it’s a big “but”.

The economic research group at the San Francisco Fed (FRBSF) recently published an analysis that concluded:

Before the pandemic, U.S. core CPI inflation remained, on average, about 1 percentage point above the OECD sample average.

Early in 2021, however, U.S. inflation increasingly diverged from the other countries.

U.S. core CPI grew from below 2% to  4.7% (in Q3, 2021).

In contrast, the OECD average increased at a more gradual rate from around 1% to 2.2% (over the same period).

First, a couple of technical points:

• For data comparability, the FRBSF analysis focuses on the core CPI … which excludes energy and food.
• Restricted by the timing of data availability, the FRBSF analysis only runs through the 3rd quarter of 2021 … all before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
• Since 2021-Q3, the year-over-year core CPI has increased from 4.7% to 6.2% … and, including food & energy, the year-over-year inflation number is over 8%

Those points notwithstanding, the FRBSF analysis is quite revealing.

• During 2019, pre-pandemic, the core inflation rate hovered around 2% in the U.S.
• In 2020,  the U.S. core inflation rate actually dropped to about 1.5% … lower than the pre-pandemic rate.
• Post-Biden’s inauguration in early 2021, the U.S. core inflation rate increased from 1.5% to 4.7% in Q3, 2021 … an increase of 3.2 percentage points.
• During that same period, the average OECD core inflation rate increased from 1.5% to 2.2% … an increase of .7 of a percentage point.

Bottom line: Given a U.S. core inflation rate of 4.7% … and using the 2.2% OECD average as a baseline for “global inflation” …  only about 20% of the U.S. core inflation rate increase since early 2021 is statistically attributable to common global inflation pressures (.7 percentage points divided by 3.2 percentage points equals 21.8%).

Said differently, about 80% of the U.S. core inflation rate increase since early 2021 is statistically attributable to factors specific to the U.S.

Sorry, Joe.

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Next up: So, what are those specific factors?

This entry was posted on June 2, 2022 at 7:48 am and is filed under Bidenomics, inflation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.