Libertarian: Biden’s Dishonesty on Inflation
Reason’s Eric Boehm recalls Wharton prof Jeremy Siegel’s warning 10 months ago that America “could easily have 20 percent inflation.” Obama Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers feared the worst inflation “in a generation.” Former International Monetary Fund chief Olivier Blanchard said spending another $1.9 trillion via President Biden’s American Rescue Plan would be like “starting a fire.” This history “matters,” Boehm argues, since the White House is now trying to blame Vladimir Putin for “the highest inflation” in 40 years. Prices climbed 7.9% from February 2021 to February 2022; Putin’s invasion didn’t start until Feb. 24. Economists predicted exactly “what we are now seeing”; any White House effort “to explain inflation that doesn’t include a hard look at its own policies is simply dishonest.”
War journal: Russia’s Next Ugly Move
Russia claims it “discovered US-led biological laboratories in Ukraine” and accuses Kyiv and Washington of violating a biological-weapons treaty, though it provided no evidence, note Anastasiia Vozovych & Tim Ogden at Spectator World. It’s “absurd,” but pay attention: Moscow often telegraphs its next moves via complaints. “Bombastic Russian warnings over Georgia’s intent to commit ‘genocide’ against Russian citizens — who received their Russian passports just days before Russia’s 2008 invasion — were repeated against Ukraine in both 2014 and this year, with invasions following shortly afterwards.” Russia’s “floundering war effort” suggests it “could prove desperate enough to use biochemical weapons.” It’s already targeting Ukrainian civilians; an “army barbaric enough to ignore the rules of war will not much care what weapons it uses in its campaign.”
Foreign desk: Putin’s War a Net Loser for China
Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine war brings with it a “major benefit for China and two much larger losses,” Charles Lipson explains at RealClear Politics. “The main benefit is geostrategic: The United States must now keep more scarce military resources in Europe, instead diverting them to the Pacific.” But it also costs China two-fold: Its “only major ally is now badly damaged, economically and militarily,” while it now sees “the deterrent effect of crippling economic sanctions,” a result of “the West’s surprising unanimity.” With the regime’s legitimacy strongly rooted in a strong economy, “any fundamental threats to that economy, now deeply embedded in world markets, would pose a significant political challenge.”
Energy beat: Joe Hurt Production From Day One
From the start, the Biden administration “has fostered a policy environment that is hostile to domestic energy production, fueling price hikes at the gas pump long before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” reports National Review’s Caroline Downey. On his first day in office, Biden suspended “the authority of local Bureau of Land Management offices to approve leases, drilling permits, and mining operations plans that would support America’s oil supply.” Two months later, it extended the suspension indefinitely and made “the fate of all future leasing and drilling permits contingent” one appointee’s personal OK. In short, Team Joe “intentionally handicapped the domestic oil industry” as “part of its mission to transition the U.S. to a green economy.”
Eye on Iran: Oil Cash + Sanctions Relief = Danger
On Iran, Ilan Berman warns at The Hill, “the past may very well be prologue.” Even if nuke talks fail, “Iran’s economic fortunes . . . are already expanding . . . thanks to the soaring world price of oil.” And sanctions relief atop its “massive quantities of oil” could bring an “infusion of capital” like the one it got after “the nuclear deal it concluded with the P5+1 powers”: “one-quarter of the country’s annual GDP” — and “the impact on Iran’s strategic ambitions was dramatic.” Since “the Trump administration’s ‘maximum pressure’ policy” ended, “a similar dynamic” is in play. The “ ‘shadow war’ that the Iranian regime is waging in the Middle East” is now “constrained by the inherent weakness of the Iranian economy.” But that “may not be for much longer.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
