Ohio's relative economic decline helps with understanding the chip on Vance's shoulder. Chart shows Ohio per cap income relative to Mass. (other wealthy states that made the switch to services work too). There's a reason MAGA wants to go back to the 1950s specifically.

Not entirely right. Economy was expanding in 1992, though job growth was sluggish. No one thought the economy was a wreck at the time.

Fed doesn't control M2, though. Monetary base, which it does control, is up a less ominous 0.3% Y/Y. Multiplier (M2/Base) has been "trending" up.

The monetary base has actually fallen since 2024 (green line, right y-axis), but the multiplier (M2 / base) has gone up (blue line, left y-axis). So not sure I'd call this "printing money."

Outside of recessions, months with smaller headline shocks (headline cpi - median cpi) seem to be times when trend inflation wasn't falling.

Now I get it.

I'm sure they would therefore agree that equity strength in the same period of Trump I was inherited from Obama (Chart shows change in SP5, 1/21/17 value = 100), and that core inflation's surge during Biden's first few months (+0.6% m/m in March, twice January's rate) was inherited from Trump I.

If that's the standard, then Biden's inflation was clearly Trump I's inflation, since price rises began to accelerate right after Biden's term started. (Chart shows month-over-month change in core PCE inflation from 2/2020 to pres.)

Speaking of inheriting a problem, always fun to point out that underlying / trend (here I use 3-mo annualized median CPI) was rising as Biden took office, and not plausibly as result of his policies.

Always assumed it was largely a productivity story which doesn't get at deeper causes, but still...

I can top that:

There's a timing problem w/ the ARP as "root cause" argument. Chart shows core PCE 1- and 3-mo annualized from 2018 to pres. The first of many surges happened in 2020. The stage was arguably set by 2021. Expectations, too, had also shot up well before 2021 (fred.stlouisfed.org/seriesBeta/M...) .

Or that it was well underway well before Biden took office. (Month-over-month XFE core, in blue, and headline, in dashed green, shown below.)