We're coming up on the 2nd anniversary of Biden's inauguration, and I have a few (not very original) thoughts about his economic policy 1/
The opening salvo was the American Rescue Plan, which came in for immense criticism as "the most irresponsible fiscal policy in 50 years". Soaring inflation seemed to vindicate the critics 2/
But now inflation seems to be coming down as fast as it went up. The new Team Transitory warns that this improvement won't last — but it's getting harder to make that case 3/
Here's "supercore" inflation — ex food, energy, shelter (which we know is very lagged) and used cars 4/ 
And here's average hourly earnings, skipping the period when pandemic compositional effects caused huge distortions 5/
Meanwhile, we seem to have avoided the "scarring" many feared, with the labor market recovering to pre-crisis levels far faster than it did after the financial crisis 6/
Maybe new data will make the picture look worse in a few months. But right now it looks as if we achieved rapid recovery at the cost of maybe 20 months of elevated inflation. 7/
Obviously we've had problems, and would do things differently with the benefit of hindsight. But does this outcome really look like a catastrophe? 8/
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
