Why did inflation rear up? Economist Jeffrey D. The economy is in better shape than many Americans realize, Ghitis observed, pointing to falling unemployment and higher household bank balances, but Biden's salesmanship has fallen short. He will need to forcefully address how he is dealing with these concerns and how his policies will help to alleviate, rather than aggravate, the underlying pressures causing Americans to pay more for their goods.'īiden 'has lost some of the connection he made with voters who embraced him as a centrist leader who would not only restore a sense of normalcy and decency to the country, but would improve the lives of middle-class Americans of all political persuasions, working with leaders of both parties,' wrote Frida Ghitis. 'For the sake of Democrats,' Zelizer wrote, 'the President will have to do more than say the situation is worrisome. He pointed out that even when inflation has been moderate - under 3% - Republicans were able to use it to score midterm election gains against Democrats in 1966. 'For all the attention that has been paid to education wars, the anti-vaccination movement or the fallout from Afghanistan, prices might turn out to be the biggest issue on going into 2022.' © David Horsey/Tribune Content Agency

President Joe Biden called the inflation surge 'worrisome,' as Julian Zelizer noted. Though no one is predicting Weimar-style hyperinflation, with many economists viewing it as a 'transitory' bump, the political danger is clear. © Mario Tama/Getty ImagesĪ person shops in the meat section of a grocery store on Novemin Los Angeles, California. Food prices are up 5%, used cars up 26% and the normally volatile price of gasoline is up nearly 50% over the past year. On Wednesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a 6.2% increase in consumer prices over the past 12 months - the biggest jump in 31 years. But the global economic disruption sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic may have awakened the inflation monster.

In the century since, central banks have taken pains to keep inflation in check, and for decades they've largely succeeded. His warning came four years before inflation reached ruinous levels in the Weimar Republic, upending millions of lives and reducing the value of German marks so much that it took more than 4 trillion to equal one American dollar. In 1919, the English economist John Maynard Keynes called inflation a means by which 'governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.' If allowed to run out of control, the falling value of currency turns 'the process of wealth-getting.into a gamble and a lottery.' Shoppers carry bags along the Strip in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Nov.

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