Actually, Psaki is not exactly telling the truth... for example, different economists have said different things... so at the end of the day, what she means is that the White House relies on economists that say what they want to hear. That is the truth... and as an aside, the economists they relied on about inflation being transitory were wrong... so the next question, why are they still relying on them?
Doocy is correct in two ways... first the price of energy soared long before Putin invaded Ukraine. Secondly, if Biden said he was going to put the full power of the Federal government behind increasing the domestic exploration, production, and transporting of oil, the price would begin to drop and continue to do so as energy companies announced new projects.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine highlighted Biden's failure to focus on domestic production of oil and gas... if we were producing far more than we needed... Russia would have little impact on oil prices in the US as our oil is mostly priced based on West Texas crude and not Brent.
We do need to finish the fourth stage of the Keystone Pipeline which would add 500,000 barrels to US supplies and build additional pipelines connecting middle America with the east and west coast refineries... likewise we need to stop the nonsense in my state to end oil exploration on and offshore.
What makes the US unique among the economic superpowers is we actually have plenty of oil resources between the US and Canada that cannot "exit" the country without our permission which is why most of US is not indexed to Brent... so why do we give away this advantage by not harvesting those resources while we expand our green energy capacity. Biden messed up when he failed to embrace an all-source energy policy and instead made "green energy" and "climate change" the cornerstones of his administration's focus.
Green energy is great... I use it... but you don't discontinue fossil fuel energy efforts until you have so much green energy that no one is using fossil fuels anymore.
You know Psaki is lying when she says "all economists" agree. They never all agree on almost anything. Furthermore, she is stating half the story...
Psaki is right that "some" inflation is normal following an economic recovery as demands expands more rapidly than supply... We have had plenty of recessions in the past and experienced some modest "recovery" inflation. But a number of Biden's policies have contributed to that supply shortage and constrained the ability of the economy to respond to demand with incremental supply.
But worse than that, the last thing you do when you are experiencing a "supply shortage" which Psaki is claiming is the driving factor behind the current inflation is flood the market with demand in the form of fiscal stimulus... which is exactly what Biden did with his policies... We took a normal supply demand imbalance problem and poured gasoline on it in the form of trillions of stimulus and infrastructure dollars... any economist looking at the M2 figure would acknowledge that... Sometimes a graph says it best...
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL?msclkid=5b9f9490ad2711eca7cbf1a96e4d3c99
When M2 is rising rapidly relative to GDP expect high inflation... most economists would agree on that...
Sadly, it is understandable that most people that don't understand what is going on would conclude that Psaki "schooled" Doocy, but informed listeners would hear in Psaki's responses, that the administration takes no responsibility for inflation and as long as that is the case, we can expect inflation will continue to rise. Proof... first quarter inflation annualized may hit double digit rates and still Biden is proposing more spending and the Fed has raised rates only .25% and Biden has done nothing other than release a few days of oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve as gas prices head towards $7 a gallon. And now governors are getting on board by wanting to issue "gas stimulus" checks to drive up demand even more rather than push for higher production (supply).
But this may be the Presidency our country needed to realize that so many progressive policies are foolish and economically unsound. One of the most important tenets of a modern economies is that cheap energy and a fully employed labor force combined with regular improvement in productivity from new technology is the basis for a growing economy and rising standards of living... printing money simply "reprices" the goods and services in an economy.
