Former late-night host Jon Stewart had clearly bought into the many reasons the current administration has thrown out there as the cause for inflation. According to Johns Hopkins University economist Steve Hanke, there is only one cause for inflation, and that is too much money flooding the market. Money like the trillions Biden has dumped in the form of handouts.
Stewart tried to combat reality with a lie and repeated things like the war in Ukraine as being the cause of our wallet woes but he was schooled by a real expert and forced to face reality.
Hanke was a senior economist with President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1981 to 1982 and has served as an adviser to heads of state in countries throughout Asia, South America, Europe, and the Middle East. He is also known for his work on currency boards, dollarization, hyperinflation, water pricing and demand, benefit-cost analysis, privatization, and other topics in applied economics.
Hanke joined the Oct. 19 edition of Apple TV’s The Problem with Jon Stewart and didn’t mince words. “Inflation is always and everywhere caused by one thing: too much money. Period,” Hanke said. “That’s the end of the story. It is simpler than you think.”
Stewart immediately tried to retort with pseudo-economic reasoning: “I’ve read studies that contradict that, but I don’t know.” Hanke didn’t waste time rebutting: “Whatever you’re reading is rubbish.”
Hanke proceeded to school Stewart on the ludicrousness of trying to blame 40-year high inflation on anything other than the Federal Reserve’s insane money-printing policies:
There has never been a sustained inflation any place in the world that hasn’t been caused by a preceding sustained increase in the money supply. Never.
The money supply skyrocketed to over $21,000,000,000,000 in July, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Just two years earlier in July 2020, when Donald Trump was president, the money supply was roughly $18 trillion, meaning that the supply ballooned by over 16 percent in just two years. Hanke called out Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell for his sordid attempts to deflect responsibility for the inflation crisis.
“They don’t want the noose around their neck as being the culprits that created the mess we’re in with inflation right now that everyone’s so mad about,” Hanke said. “That’s why they’re trying to convince you, Jon, that the supply chains did it. That Putin did it. Oil prices did it. Wheat prices, embargoes, you name it!”
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Hanke has written extensively as a columnist for Forbes magazine and other publications. He is also a currency and commodity trader.