Why did CNBC’s Jim Cramer think it was a good idea to sycophantically praise the Federal Reserve’s inflation-reduction measures the day before the release of an awful inflation report?
Cramer hoodwinked viewers during the Sept. 12 edition of Squawk on the Street: “I know we’re worried about the Fed, but before we worry about the Fed like [BGC Partners Inc. CEO Howard] Lutnick would have had in the previous segment, they may be winning! I mean, tomorrow, CPI, they may be winning! Why do we presume that it has to go up, up and up …when its entirely possible that the only thing really left is wage and food?”
He speculated further: “What if food goes down? What if the wages stall, meaning, just, we don’t get any more increases? Then, I think we put in the bottom on a lot of stocks! Too bullish? …. I don't think so!”
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) 24 hours later released a report showing inflation came in worse than expected, which indicated that Cramer should have just kept his big mouth shut. The report contributed to the three major stock indexes tumbling for their worst one-day drop since 2020.
The BLS report noted that prices spiked 8.3 percent year-over-year in August, with core inflation (which excludes food and energy prices due to volatility) rising 6.3 percent from the same time last year, “a larger increase than the 5.9-percent increase for the 12 months ending in July.”
The inflation figures were worse than expected. Food prices, despite Cramer’s nonsensical prediction, shot up a whopping 13.5 percent year-over-year for the highest increase since 1979. If that wasn’t bad enough, “US rental inflation accelerated in August as shelter costs rose 0.7%, marking the biggest monthly increase since 1991 and keeping overall inflation elevated,” according to Bloomberg News.
But Cramer fawned over Fed Chairman Jerome Powell as some kind of hero: “He’s my man.”
The Fed that Cramer is slobbering over is the same one that’s been excusing the inflation crisis away on “everything under the sun but money” for its own disastrous money-printer-go-brrr policies, as Johns Hopkins University economist Steve Hanke pointed out.
The money supply, also referred to as M2, skyrocketed to over $21,000,000,000,000 in July, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. In July 2020, when Donald Trump was president, the money supply was roughly $18 trillion, meaning that the money supply ballooned by over 16 percent in two years.
Today’s CPI report confirms that the US has a serious inflation problem.
— Lawrence H. Summers (@LHSummers) September 13, 2022
Core inflation is higher this month than for the quarter, higher this quarter than last quarter, higher this half of the year than the previous one, and higher last year than the previous one.
CBS News reported Sept. 14 that “[m]ost U.S. workers say they are struggling to cover everyday expenses as stubbornly high inflation gobbles up pay gains, a new survey shows.”
Take a seat, Cramer.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact CNBC at cnbcnewspr@nbcuni.com and demand its talking heads stop acting like shills for the Federal Reserve.
