EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Oh my: Retail sales drop 1.9% — in Christmas shopping season. “In other words, we’re tiptoeing closer to a recession than toward significant growth outside of inflation already. That will complicate the Federal Reserve’s response to this massive inflationary wave, which most expect to be a robust increase in interest rates in the next several meetings. That could help tame inflation, but it would almost certainly now push the economy into a significant recession, adding to the Biden administration’s political woes. They can hardly afford to sit on their hands while stagflation begins to loom over the American economy, but it’s clear that all of their choices are going to be bad — and that 2022 will not be a happy year for American households.”

Expansionary monetary policy coupled with business-choking regulation leads to stagflation, just as it did in the 1970s.