Is President Biden the new President Carter? There are some similarities. They were both elected as place-holders basically and probably couldn't have gotten elected otherwise. After Nixon, Carter was seen as the anti-Nixon, more like a Mr. Roger's character with his sweaters, and humble demeanor. Nixon was a crook and Carter was not. Carter was a nice guy but an ineffective President. He faced the oil embargo but didn't effectively deal with the economic effects (or Iran). Biden dealt with Afghanistan but it wasn't the smoothest job. Biden was seen as the anti-Trump. No one really wanted him and he was picked just in the hopes that he could beat Trump. He is a nice guy who is ineffective in economic matters. He inherited Covid and you have to give everyone (Trump included) a little slack for how you initially deal with a "Black Swan" event but Trump just largely ignored it until close to the end of his term, Biden initially did pretty well before the Covid variations started cropping up and the problem didn't go away. Too much money was thrown out into the economy. Initially no one knew how bad things would get but pretty quickly we could see that we dodged a bullet in the sense that most people were able to keep their jobs and work from home and those that couldn't, in many cases, got more in unemployment checks than they were making at their jobs. The stock market bounced back rapidly as well. Biden did a good job in his first 6 months getting the Covid vaccine distributed all over the country and at no cost to the public. This is where the good news stops and the Carter like qualities crop up. They shut down the economy, stopping production, asked people to stay home and mailed out stimulus checks whether you needed it or not. They were then surprised when we got inflation. This is pretty much the definition of inflation (too many dollars chasing too few goods). You would think the outcome would be ..."lesson learned" but no. The stimulus checks continued well into the fall when there was no need at all. The PPP program was overkill as well. At the current date Biden has spent about $4 trillion with the "recovery" program, inflation reduction act, the infrastructure package and now with the student loan forgiveness. Basically $4 trillion at a time with high inflation, demanding high interest rates. Carter wasn't quite this clueless. We have a decent jobs market at the moment, the stock market crashed but seems stabilized at the moment (but still down) , and interest rates are still going up. Our public debt is going way up and our interest payments on that debt will be going way up due to the increasing rates. At some point things have to get a lot worse. Yet, Biden is busy making things worse rather than better with his unnecessary spending. No doubt, the administration will be "surprised" when the weight of the debt payments causes the economy to come crashing down. Even the Inflation Reduction Act had little in it to actually reduce inflation but what little it had was nullified by the student debt forgiveness. Biden may have bought some votes with this stunt for the mid-term elections. The Democrats may actually gain a seat or two in the Senate. I suppose it's possible that they don't lose the House but I think they will still lose it but maybe not by as much as feared. The Supreme Court abortion decision and the State trigger laws will undoubtedly bring a lot of voters out that wouldn't have voted in the mid-terms and the crazier than usual candidates that the Republicans are running may mean that Biden dodges a bullet in the mid-terms. His crazy handling of the economy is likely to bring him down in 2024. The wild card is Trump of course and whether he has been indicted (and convicted?) by then but Biden isn't doing anything to help himself in 2024 with his handling of the economy (like Carter, worse than Carter). Carter or Biden? Which "nice guy" was the least competent President? It's a close call but my vote would probably be for Biden since Carter had less control over OPEC. Biden's problems are largely self-inflicted.
