New York Times writer Peter Coy once again kissed the ring of Bidenomics by actually having the gall to bemoan in writing how President Joe Biden wouldn’t be remembered for the marvelous way he handled the economy.
We’re still waiting for the punchline.
Coy mourned the “Tragedy of Joe Biden” in a January 10 column, crying over how Biden was essentially relegated to the background “like a ghost — stiff, wan, often unseen by the public.” Coy didn’t get to the second paragraph before turning his piece into a comedy strip, “It is a crushing end to his presidency. He had some remarkable achievements when it comes to the economy, but he couldn’t shape the narrative around his own record.” Uh, that’s because the economy doesn’t agree with this narrative. After Coy complained against voter “disappointment” standing in the way of Biden’s greatness, he then dropped the following acid: “In reality, Biden’s handling of the economy was good, if not great.” [Emphasis.]
Newsflash Coy: Telling voters they’re detached from reality when they’re the ones struggling to make ends meet in the inflation-rattled economy caused by Biden arbitrarily injecting trillions of dollars into it is not a winning message. “Stubborn facts, it seems, are no match for stubborn perceptions,” wrote Coy. Talk about cringe.
Coy celebrated how the U.S. supposedly “had the strongest economic growth in the Group of 7 wealthy, industrialized nations in 2023 and was projected to be No. 1 again in 2024, the International Monetary Fund projected in October.” Of course, Coy didn’t mention the exploding national debt once in his piece, nor that it was a significant driver behind much of the so-called “growth.” Even Coy’s colleague, Chief White House Correspondent Peter Baker, conceded in his own piece lecturing voters on Bidenomics that the national debt now “represents a larger share of the economy than it has in generations, other than during the pandemic itself.” Yeah, try a debt-to-GDP ratio of 123 percent. There’s another problem with Coy’s argument, if you want to call it that.
The Economist measured the economic performance for ”37 mostly rich countries” in 2024 by combining GDP growth, stock market performance, core inflation, unemployment and government deficit. As National Review senior political correspondent Jim Geraghty first pointed out about The Economist’s analysis, the U.S. is ranked 20th overall, “in what can at best be called a very mixed bag — ranking ninth among the 37 countries in GDP, fourth in stock market performance, 23rd in inflation, 29th in change in unemployment rate over the past year, and 31st in estimated deficit growth compared to GDP.”
But Coy’s column writ large was a veritable minefield of factual obfuscations and falsehoods, such as this condescension, “While economists under-predicted inflation, consumers overreacted to it, as I have argued.” He used this as a pretext to argue that, “In reality, according to Census Bureau data, median household income adjusted for inflation was 1.3 percent higher in 2023 than in 2020, Trump’s last year in office.” This is wildly deceptive. As economist Dan Mitchell analyzed September 11 using Census Bureau data, ““[t]he good news is that median family income rose last year.” However, “The bad news is that families are still worse off than they were before the pandemic.” [Emphasis added.]
Take the supposedly stellar jobs situation as another example. “Among the stubborn facts that Biden cited in his speech was that he presided over the lowest average unemployment rate of any presidential administration in the past half-century,” praised Coy. Of course, nowhere did he mention the “widespread labor shortage” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce disclosed Dec. 13.
In fact, as Heritage Foundation economist EJ Antoni pointed out January 10 on X (the same day Coy's drivel was published), “Full-time jobs have fallen 1.3 million since Jun '23 w/ all net job growth since then coming from part-time work; for the last 18 months, the gig economy has shifted into overdrive while the fundamentals stagnate, if not deteriorate.” As Coy should know, the devil is in the details.
Full-time jobs have fallen 1.3 million since Jun '23 w/ all net job growth since then coming from part-time work; for the last 18 months, the gig economy has shifted into overdrive while the fundamentals stagnate, if not deteriorate... pic.twitter.com/SHtAN2uViU
— E.J. Antoni, Ph.D. (@RealEJAntoni) January 10, 2025
To cap his nonsense off, Coy sang the praises of Biden’s $1.9 trillion inflation-triggering stimulus and other spendthrift legislation. But “[u]nfortunately for Biden, what people remember most is that the stimulus contributed to the spike in inflation, which got as high as 9 percent in June 2022.” Duh! But Coy excused this away too: “That’s clear in hindsight. But it was far from obvious at the time that the stimulus was too much of a good thing.”
Oh, really? Is that why President Barack Obama’s former National Economic Council Director Larry Summers was banging the alarm bells as early as 2021 warning that the stimulus would “will set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation?”
Take your pills, Coy.
