Since the Biden administration rejected worries about cost increases and claimed the underlying causes were temporary, the United States has faced high inflation for 13 consecutive months.
“We have in recent months seen some inflation, and we — at least on a year-over-year basis — will continue, I believe, through the rest of the year, to see higher inflation rates, maybe around 3 percent. But I personally believe that this represents transitory factors,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in early June 2022.
About a month later, in July, President Biden said there was no need to be concerned about inflation and said it would only be a temporary problem.
In a speech on July 19 of last year, President Joe Biden declared that he knows that the economy has come roaring back. He said that some people have expressed concern that this would be an indication of ongoing inflation. He reiterated that this is not how they view the situation.
About a year after Yellen, Biden, and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell all played down the country’s inflation rate of 5.4 percent, it spiked to 9.1 percent on Wednesday, a level not seen in forty years.
The rate of inflation is at its highest level since December 1981.
Core prices, which do not include food and energy prices, increased 5.9 percent over the previous year. Core prices also increased by 0.7 percent on a monthly basis, more than in April and May, indicating that widespread and persistent underlying inflationary pressures still exist.
Energy costs jumped 7.5 percent from the previous month in June and are up 41.6 percent from a year ago, suggesting that inflation may not have reached its high yet. The average price of gasoline has increased by 59.9% over the last year and by 11.2 percent since May. As customers paid more for commodities including cereal, poultry, milk, and fresh vegetables in June, the food index increased by 1%.
Recently, Yellen and Powell acknowledged that they had been mistaken about the direction that inflation would go at the time.
Even as recently as last week, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre asserted that the American economy is stronger than it has ever been.
