Tucker Carlson: The Biden administration won't even admit what a recession is
Fox News host Tucker Carlson dissects the Biden administration's handling of the economy on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.'
It didn't take long. It took, well, about a year and a half for the Biden administration to destroy the American economy and drive this nation into a recession. Now, the Biden administration won't admit that we're in a recession. In fact, they've actually redefined the word "recession" just as they've redefined the words "democracy," "racism" and "woman," but you don't need to know what the word is to know what is happening. If you live here, you see it every single day.
We're in a recession. The economy has been shrinking all year. Real wages are at record lows and at the same time, inflation is the highest it's been in the lifetime of most Americans. So, call it whatever you want, but it's a recession and it's scary and they're ignoring it. We're going to spend the next hour investigating how exactly this happened. How did they tank the economy so fast and what does it mean?
To get to the answers to those questions, we're going to speak to people who have actual credibility on economics and that emphatically does not include our most highly credentialed economists, people who, like the public health experts we've watched the last two and a half years, have thoroughly beclowned and discredited themselves.
A year ago, right about the time he told us that vaccines will absolutely prevent you from getting or transmitting COVID, Joe Biden was asked about, "Hey, what happens if we go into a recession?" In response, as he invariably does, Joe Biden invoked highly credentialed experts. Watch this.
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PRESIDENT BIDEN: We also know that as our economy has come roaring back. We see some price increases. Some folks have raised worries that this could be a sign of persistent inflation, but that's not our view. Our experts believe, and the data shows, that most of the price increases we've seen were expected and are expected to be temporary.
President Biden speaks about inflation and supply chain issues in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Every word read off a teleprompter. A decade from now, we're going to see tape like that and think, "I cannot believe that man was the president of the United States." But consider what his handlers wrote for him. The experts Biden was referring to are, in fact, some of the most well-credentialed figures in all of academic economics. In fact, two months later, in September of last year, 17 winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics signed a letter urging Joe Biden to spend as much money as possible and we're quoting "The Build Back Better package," they wrote, "will transform the U.S. economy to be more efficient without presenting an inflationary threat."
So, go ahead and spend more money, create it out of thin air, print it and there's no chance you'll get inflation. Winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics said that. If you took Econ 101, you're laughing at that.
By the way, it wasn't just them. The chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, said the same thing. "The incoming data are very consistent with the view that inflation will move down toward our goals," Powell said.
It's like idiotic, and it turned out not to be true. Now, the remarkable thing, the way you know this isn't simply incompetence, they did this on purpose, is what happened when these so-called experts were exposed as frauds, which they are. Not a single one of these eminent Nobel Prize-winning economists ever apologized for the letter they wrote or even explained how they got it wrong. They're still saying the same thing — spend more money, and it won't affect inflation because when you have much more of something, it's worth the same.
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Oh, because supply and demand isn't real. They're all saying this to the extent they're even paying attention. Most of them aren't. They're way off into lifestyle liberal-land, like they all are. They're worried about trans rights. The St .Louis Fed, for example, one of the most important financial institutions in the United State, one of the banks that make up the central bank, they've been conducting studies about what? About what monetary policy would be best to avoid complete economic collapse? Well, you'd think so. That's their job, but that's not what they've been doing.
Instead, for the past month, (We're not making this up) the St. Louis Fed has been meditating on equity, a term that no one can really define, but clearly means your life, Mr. and Mrs. American, is about to get much worse.
So, just as Joe Biden audibly took office, equity is now the top priority of the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis. Again, books will be written about this years from now and no one believe it actually happened, but it's real. Take a look at their website. Some of the top articles on the website, on the blog of the St. Louis Fed include, "Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Access to COVID-19 Relief," "COVID-19 Disruption by race, Ethnicity and Geography," "The Role of Diversity in Public Institutions," and "Reducing Racial Employment Gaps for Young Adults Without College Education."
Again, this is not a syllabus from the sociology department at Brandeis. This is the Fed. These are the people in charge of our monetary policy who are supposed to be keeping America from collapsing. But they're ignoring their actual job in favor of pretending that they're professors at Brandeis.
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It's lunatic and they're still talking this way. In April, well after it was very clear inflation was not transitory, Janet Yellen, the treasury secretary, former head of the Fed, someone who should be charged for what she did to the U.S. economy, gave a speech not about the U.S. economy. She's the Treasury Secretary. No, but about climate change and why climate change is more important than saving the United States.
We're quoting, "We must redouble our efforts to decarbonize our economies," Yellen said at an address at the Atlantic Council. Keep in mind, Janet Yellen doesn't know anything about climate. She can't drive a standard transmission. She knows nothing about the material world, but there she is, spouting off on climate change and decarbonizing, reading every stupid, faddish talking point the Atlantic Council audience wanted to hear about and she's still doing it. We're in a slow-down, she said on Sunday, and it's not affecting too many sectors of the economy, says Janet Yellen. Watch.
JANET YELLEN: This is not an economy that's in recession, but we're in a period of transition in which growth is slowing, and that's necessary and appropriate, and we need to be growing at a steady and sustainable pace. So, there is a slowdown and businesses can see that, and that's appropriate given that people now have jobs and we have a strong labor market, but you don't see any of the signs now. A recession is a broad-based contraction that affects many sectors of the economy. We just don't have that.
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she was wrong about the path of inflation after months of downplaying the issue. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Okay. Let's be clear. Janet Yellen is a completely incompetent affirmative-action hire who did profound generational damage to the United States during her time running the Fed. Now, she's doing the same while running the Treasury Department and yet no one ever calls her on it. The things she says don't make sense. She can't even predict inflation when every single other person in the country knew it was coming based on the federal government's spending patterns.
Keep spending money. That's what she's still saying. Everyone in the Biden administration is saying that. In May, the head of USAID, Samantha Power—she's back— declared that worldwide fertilizer shortage is actually a good thing. Starvation is a good thing because that means fewer carbon emissions. Never let a crisis go to waste, she said. She actually said that.
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Inside the White House, no one's even pretending to care as the U.S. economy falls apart. They're not worried about the oil supply. In fact, they're selling our oil to our main global rival, China. They're not worried about the stock market. They couldn't tell you what's up or down. They cannot even define a recession. The one thing they're sure of is everything's fine, except for the trans community, which is suffering under your bigotry. Here's our press secretary.
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: And nothing has changed on how we see the stock market. We do not. That's not something that we keep an eye on every day.
REPORTER: What is the latest update the White House has received on the current formula situation across the country?
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: Let me see if I have anything new for you on that.
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REPORTER: Does the president mind that some of this oil that was meant to ease the pain for consumers is headed overseas?
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: I have not seen that report, so I would honestly have to go look into it and see what the truth is in that statement that you just laid out and see exactly what's happening. I just have not seen that report.
REPORTER: Is he adamant that there is not going to be recession?
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: I mean, it's not our definition. Right. We're talking about a definition from NBER.
REPORTER: And what is exactly the White House's definition of a recession?
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: Again, we don't, we don't, I'm not going to define it from here.
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We're not going to define a recession. We're not going to acknowledge it's even happening, and so they're not and no one's forcing them to. That's what they're saying. This is untenable. Unless you're an utterly partisan economist, you have to acknowledge what's happening. But those highly credentialed are not acknowledging it. They're blaming Putin. They're blaming January 6 and of course, on the basic point of whether the economy is in trouble, there are very few people left to deny it.
GAYLE KING, CBS JULY 19: The threat of an economic downturn is shaking up consumers and small business owners. A recent survey taken by Goldman Sachs found 93%, 93% of small businesses, fear a recession.
LARRY SUMMERS, CNN JULY 24: I think there's a very high likelihood of recession. When we've been in this kind of situation before, recession has essentially always followed.
PAUL KRUGMAN, MSNBC JULY 21: We did, in fact, end up with what is clearly an overheated economy and the effect of that overheating on inflation was bigger than this past experience would have led us to believe.
NOURIEL ROUBINI, BLOOMBERG JULY 25: I think there are many reasons why we're going to have a severe recession and a severe debt and financial crisis. Debt ratios are historically high.
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So, if Larry Summers, who literally blamed the insurrection on January 6 for inflation, and Paul Krugman, who's been wrong about everything, humiliates himself weekly in The New York Times, if they're admitting that actually the economy is in trouble, then there's really no denying it. You can't deny it. We've reached the limit of denial.
Take a look at this chart. Notice that right before the 2008 recession, the consumer price index was surging just as it is now. Prices went up until the crash, so they always crash. Why does that happen? What happens? For a simple reason. Goods become too expensive for people to buy and then GDP collapses. The IMF is sending out warning signals as well. They now predict a global recession as soon as next year. What happens then?
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