February 11, 2021 

By Trish Regan

Sometimes, you just have to stand up for what’s right… politics and cancel culture be damned. Truth of opinion matters, and it’s critical that we have the ability to exercise our voices.

One liberal economist is learning this the hard way.

To understand the complexity of this moment, we need to examine what’s at play in Washington, D.C. right now.

The circus is in town for a repeat performance.

The historical impeachment trial began for former President Donald Trump earlier this week. One impeachment is rare… Two impeachments, the second occurring after a president has left office, is unprecedented.

This whole charade serves as an example of the Left’s desire to shut out any lagging Trump support that may exist in society. The Left will do all it can to suppress any future political support for the former president… making it difficult for the Republican Party to embrace any of the “America First” platforms his administration stood for in the future, including:

• Lower taxes
• A pullback in overseas military efforts
• Lessened regulations
• Economic policies to guard American jobs against China
• Legal immigration

They will ensure that he and the entire Republican Party (for ever having supported him!) are viewed as toxic. If they are successful with a conviction, they will bar the former president from ever seeking public office again.

To be fair, Trump has made mistakes, as P.J. O’Rourke and I discussed in a recent American Consequences podcast… Nonetheless, this impeachment trial is setting a dangerous precedent.

From here on out, can we just simply impeach any former lawmaker after he or she is out of office? It’s certainly one way to knock out the competition and “cancel” anyone the liberal mainstream media deems inappropriate. 

I would caution that as a nation, we are entering some really choppy waters…

This desire to cancel (or shall we say “impeach”) any and all people that express a different viewpoint other than the one accepted by the mainstream media could prove to be quite dangerous and will extend beyond just our political lives.

Case in point… Even those willing to stand up for economic principles are now at risk of being attacked by the so-called mob of Leftists, hungry to take down anyone in the way of their political goals… even one of their own.

Bill Clinton’s former treasury secretary, Larry Summers, who also served as director of the National Economic Council under Barack Obama, dared to sound the alarm on the Biden administration’s overzealous stimulus program.

Writing for the Washington Post, Summers argued that Biden’s plan was excessive and that it might trigger “inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation, with consequences for the value of the dollar and financial stability.”

 He‘s right.

I’ve argued this for years… including most recently when the Trump administration handed out $2,000 stimulus checks and then wanted to hand out $2,000 more.

All this money printing and federal spending is excessive. And when money is this plentiful, what happens? Inflation.

Now some might say during the Obama/Biden years, we had plenty of stimulus from the Fed… and yet we had no inflation.

That’s partly correct… But as I discussed in my feature story on our hourglass economy, the Fed has unintentionally created inflationary pressures in asset prices (like the stock market), thereby enabling the rich to grow richer and the poor to grow poorer, while the middle class gets squeezed. 

Meanwhile, consider the combination effect of excessive monetary and fiscal stimulus working in unison today. After all, in the Obama years, the Fed was the only game in town. Federal unemployment checks were $25 a week under Obama. Today, they’re $400.

So, if you combine excessive federal spending and handouts with an overly accommodative monetary policy from the Federal Reserve… you’ve got the makings of an inflation storm. 

Has anyone considered what exactly we will do when rates are so high that we can’t even service the loans on our debt?

Biden’s plan is excessive. And although Summers says he’s generally a believer “that the dangers of doing too little are greater than doing too much,” it’s still “not an argument to justify any level of fiscal stimulus.”

This may be why President Biden seems so intent on talking down our economy on the heels of last month’s positive jobs report… He wants more stimulus.

Just how are we going to pay all this back?

And what happens when Americans make more money on unemployment than they do on actual work… How does that ensure an economic recovery?

Meanwhile, the printing presses can only print for so long before you start to see rampant inflation. 

Inflation is one of the worst penalties imaginable for the poor and middle class… All savings will effectively be wiped out. $10,000 today could be worth much, much less in five years.

Apparently, Left-wing politicians and their mainstream media supporters aren’t thinking about what the economy will look like in five years. And when an economist dares to bring up the dreaded “I” word, he’s laughed out of town. 

Summers is in hot water now, being mocked and attacked by multiple liberal media publications…

Mother Jones: “The White House Doesn’t Want To Hear From Larry Summers”

Slate: “Larry Summers Has Some Weird Fears About the Biden Relief Plan”

Politico: “Larry Summers plays the skunk at the COVID relief party” 

And then there’s socialist paper Jacobin which writes, “The Era of the Neo-liberal Svengali-like Summers might be coming to an end,” while asking, “Why isn’t Larry Summers being driven from public life?”

Wow.

You see, the Left now wants to cancel a prominent economist who has worked for several Democratic administrations because he has dared to step out of line.

 This is the danger of cancel culture.

If we can‘t even have a serious economic discussion about our future with someone who has put many years into trying to advance liberal economic policies, then we are truly at a breaking point.

Summers is now trying to soften and explain some of his comments. In a follow-up piece this week in the Washington Post, “My column on the stimulus sparked a lot of questions. Here are my answers…” Summers tried to appease and reason with the mob.

But there’s no reasoning with them…

The Left is proving they are willing to eat their own, including a guy who’s worked diligently on the economic side for the Democratic Party for many years – all for the sake of some greater Utopian political good.

But Larry Summers is right…

Sometimes the truth hurts.

Episode 22 Highlights

• The Basics of Bitcoin: It’s a store of value that investors will treat like gold over time. It’s portable, transferable, safe, and scarce, i.e., very valuable.
• Bitcoin is to cryptocurrency what Amazon is to retail… what Google is to search… and what Facebook is to social networks.
• If you had put $10,000 into Amazon on its IPO date in 1997, you’d now have $21 million. Anthony Scaramucci believes that bitcoin’s trajectory could be just as profitable for investors getting in now.
• Bitcoin by the Numbers: There are currently 21 million coins, 105 million users, and the price per coin has risen as high as $47,000.

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Regards,

Trish Regan
Publisher, American Consequences
With Editorial Staff
February 11, 2021