In the world we live in today, narratives have become more important than facts.
You simply cannot let facts speak for themselves.
People may draw their own conclusions.
That is simply too dangerous.
We can't have people making up their own minds based on unfiltered facts.
If you are in politics you always need a narrative.
If you are in the media business you also need a narrative to insure that your slant on the news is the only one that is reported.
Nowhere was the narrative machine more geared up than during the Covid pandemic.
For example, the narrative machine went full circle on the questions of masks.
Remember when we were told that they should not be used early in the pandemic because they were not effective?
We then went through the long period when we were told. they were absolutely critical. They were so important they had to be mandated for everyone.
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| Source: https://abcnews.go.com/US/covid-19-controlled-months-people-wear-masks-cdc/story?id=71783194 |
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| Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/16/cdc-director-says-face-masks-may-provide-more-protection-than-coronavirus-vaccine-.html |
We are now told that all of those surgical and cloth masks don't really work anyway.
All though this, the science and facts never changed.
There were countless scientific studies before the pandemic began that concluded that these masks did not work in protecting anyone from a respiratory virus.
I wrote about these studies in two blog posts early in the pandemic ("The Anti-Mask League" and "Unmasking Masks" when mask mandates were first becoming popular.
I also wrote about the large randomized clinical trial on the use of surgical masks in Denmark in November, 2020 involving 6,000 participants that concluded the masks were of no benefit in preventing Covid.
The facts and science did not matter. The narrative was the only thing that was important.
We now find that Joe Biden and the Democrats are desperately trying to craft a narrative they can use to explain inflation.
This is a taller task as the facts are more difficult to hide.
People fill up their gas tanks and go to the grocery store every week. They see the reality for themselves and see and feel the money coming out of their wallets.The goal of the narrative here is to cast blame on someone else.
The average person is not reading RCT studies on the effectiveness of masks.
Let's briefly review some of the attempts we have seen to create a narrative to explain away the inflation numbers we have seen over the last year in which the annual inflation rate has gone from less than 2% in February, 2021 to 7.9% in February, 2022.
Here is a breakdown of some of the major items that work out to the 7.9% overall inflation rate.
These are the various attempts to create a narrative around the inflation numbers beginning last summer.
July, 2021
The inflation increases are transitory.
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| Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Mmcp--_hDw |
July, 2021
No serious economist thinks unchecked inflation is on the way.
November, 2021
January, 2022
Inflation is actually good for everyday Americans. It is bad for the rich.
A CNN business correspondent actually argued that inflation can be good for everyday Americans. She makes that argument by reasoning that any debt they have can more easily be paid off with higher wages.
That might be true if those wages didn't have to be used first to put food on the table, put gas in their car or pay to heat their homes.
March, 2022
Of course, that 7.9% inflation figure that was announced last week for the year ending February 28, 2022 had nothing to do with Putin who did not invade the Ukraine until February 24.
Why let facts get in the way of a good narrative?
In the meantime, Biden and the Democrats are doing everything they can to be sure that no one thinks that out of control government spending or a Federal Reserve policy that has accommodated it is to blame.
Here is Joe Biden saying he is sick of the American people thinking that inflation has been caused by the government spending more money.
Here is Nancy Pelosi saying that government spending has nothing to do with inflation or anything else.
She say that government spending is actually reducing the national debt.
Huh?
In the last two years, the federal government has run $6.1 trillion in deficits.
Congress passed $4.4 trillion in various "Covid relief" measures in that period.
Biden and the Democrats wanted to spend $1.9 trillion more on an additional Covid relief plan before Senator Joe Manchin refused to vote for it because he believed it would be inflationary.
Undeterred, Biden and the Democrats came back with a $1 trillion package that they are promoting as "Build Back Better" that does many of the same things they wanted in their Covid relief package.
How is it possible to fund all of this deficit spending?
The Federal Reserve" bought" the bonds out of thin air that financed that spending and put that debt on its balance sheet as an "asset".
In effect, the federal government gave an IOU to the Fed.
Combined with what the Fed did after the financial crisis of 2008-2010, the Fed now carries nearly $9 trillion of federal debt as an asset on its balance sheet.
Could the federal government spend $ 6 trillion it does not have without the Fed making it possible?
There is no way.
Going into the bond market to borrow that much money would have have sent interest rates soaring.
As bond yields would have had to go higher and higher to attract capital, people would no longer put their money into stocks and houses. There would have been no stock market or housing price boom.
We would also not be facing the inflation surge we are seeing now that was exacerbated by the ill-considered decision by Biden to cancel the Keystone pipeline and make it as hard as possible for any U.S. oil and gas production.
Energy drives the economy. Energy costs work their way into every facet of the economy. Those costs ultimately work their way through everything we produce and use. It is inescapable. Higher energy costs have fueled the inflation surge we are now in.
I may not be a "serious economist" but
I warned in these pages back in May that inflation was likely in our future and it would not be transitory. Our fiscal, monetary and energy policies were inevitably leading us in that direction.
Beware the narrative.
It is likely that those who create a narrative are primarily interested in pointing you away from reality.
The fact is that those who create these narratives are doing all that they can to direct your attention away from them.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
Or the facts hidden behind the narrative.
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