Ordinarily, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris can manage the job themselves of gaslighting the voters on the glories of the U.S. economy as midterms approach.  One expects this sort of thing from this pair because they are economic illiterates.

But it's not just they making absurd statements about how great this economy is.  Their Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, supposedly a respected economist, has been spouting their nonsense in recent days, too.

A few days ago, according to Breitbart News:

During portions of an interview with CNN aired on Thursday's broadcast of "OutFront," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stated that she doesn't see indications of a recession in the American economy right now, the Biden administration isn't getting credit for economic problems avoided by its actions, and people should be patient as they wait for the results of the Biden administration's policies.

Yellen stated, "I don't see signs of a recession in this economy at this point." And "We have unemployment at a 50-year low. There are two job vacancies for every American who is looking for work. We have solid household finances, business finances, banks that are well-capitalized, and we've been creating, [on] average, 300,000 jobs a month."

She also said that over the medium term, "we have [a] historic investment in the strength of our economy, the passage of three very important bills."

Yellen also argued that due to a rapid economic recovery, there are "problems we don't have because of what the Biden administration has done. So, often one doesn't get credit for problems that don't exist."

It makes one wonder what's gotten into her.  No recession?  Consumer finances in good shape?  Biden's big government spending an "investment"?

She's supposed to be a respected economist.  She sounds like a political hack. 

But that goes against the conventional wisdom about her.

In the past couple of days, Yellen's been subject to two glowing biographies about her economic prowess, one by longtime Wall Street Journal financial reporter Jon Hilsenrath.

My friend & colleague Jon Hilsenrath's biography of Janet Yellen is out: a must read for anyone who cares about economics & economic policy. Booklist said, "This well-researched portrait ... unfolds into a slice of American economic history.” Order here: https://t.co/vnfUJTnhAL

— Greg Ip (@greg_ip) November 1, 2022

...which drew high praise from Democrat royalty for its choice of subjects:

Yellen by Jon Hilsenrath tells her story in a vivid way. After my parents, Janet Yellen & George Akerlof are my favorite economic couple. I’ve learned much from them in the vast majority of times when we agreed but also on the rare occasions when we saw things differently. https://t.co/VUDiQ4zAoY

— Lawrence H. Summers (@LHSummers) November 3, 2022

There was also this one here.

Now she's saying absurd things.

She claims no recession.  That is laughable; the hard numbers indicate that the textbook definition of recession, with two straight quarters of negative GDP growth, has already been met.  There was a slightly better number in the quarter after, but whom is she fooling?  The economy is significantly distressed and trying to come up for air a few times before it sinks.  Inflation stands around 8% or more, and the Federal Reserve has hiked rates six times this year to wring the inflation out of the system.  The White House has been trying to change the definition of recession as its response.  But Yellen keeps saying all's fine.

Yellen also praises the job situation, as if she's unaware of how falling economies break apart in chunks.  The employment situation is the final collapsing pillar of a falling economy.  Some of the first things to go are prices through the vandalism of inflation, producer prices, purchasing managers' spending, and the supply chain, all of which are showing flashing red lights.  Surely, she would know that the U.S. employment report is the culmination of the state of the economy, and just because the jobs are there now doesn't mean there aren't big problems coming down the pike.  As of August, a PwC survey of 700 executives and board members signaled that 51% expect to start laying off workers in coming months.  Prominent bank economists have forecast that the U.S. has just a couple of months left before the jobless numbers start climbing in earnest.

She also claims that consumer finances are in good shape, in a blobby overgeneralization, ignoring some disturbing indicators that signal trouble for consumers on the horizon.  Did she hear about how consumers are maxing out their credit cards, using food banks, and skipping Thanksgiving in response to Bidenflation?  Did she read about how Bank of America in its latest earnings report increased its loan-loss reserves in anticipation of a lot of defaults?  Did she read the reports about falling wages, or about how worker wage gains have been erased by inflation?  To claim that consumers are in great shape isn't going to go down well with a lot of...voters, whose "lived experience," as the lefties like to say, tells a different story.

She also praises Joe Biden's big spending as "investments" in the economy, making one wonder if she is writing Joe Biden's talking points about how his big spending won't kick in until the first of the year and everything will be hunky-dory, but right now, he's not getting credit.  It's like she's taking her economic cues from Joe and aping his economic gibberish.  If she's advising him to say what he's saying, that's grotesque: no wonder he doesn't know what he's doing.

But just as likely, she's copying his line, manufactured in the spin shops of the Biden White House, which amounts to a complete politicization of her chosen expertise of economics.

Why do I think that?  Because she's reportedly being set up by the Bidenites to take the fall for when the bottom falls out of the economy after the coming disastrous midterms for Democrats.  She's denied it's true, but now she's been parroting some of the worst Bidenist absurdities on the economy — the claim that all is well; there's no such thing as recession; and Biden's big spending, far from being an inflation-maker, is really just "investment."  She's lately been covering her tracks by setting the stage to blame the Fed for when the bottom drops out of the economy, so we know she's thinking about it.

She has a history of sorts with this kind of adopted incompetence.  Back in June, she said she didn't know that inflation would spin out of control.  According to CNN:

Washington (CNN) US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen admitted Tuesday that she had failed to anticipate how long high inflation would continue to plague American consumers as the Biden administration works to contain a mounting political liability.

"I think I was wrong then about the path that inflation would take," Yellen told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room" when asked about her comments from 2021 that inflation posed only a "small risk."

I remember writing this at the time:

What a stupid person. Who the heck's job was it to keep an eye on inflation, which affects 300 million people participating in the economic system in our country? That's right, Janet Yellen, who as Treasury Secretary has the explicit job of guarding the value of the currency, and as former Fed chief under President Obama, had an even more serious job of setting monetary policy which has the highest impact on the value of the currency. She's been placed in jobs of enormous power — she was the hand on the button of the money press — and now she's admitting that she doesn't even know basic economics

Who's job was it to watch for inflation? That's right, hers. 

Her 'duh, I didn't know' response makes her look insanely stupid, given that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, as the late Milton Friedman famously put it.

She was one of the first to call inflation "transitory" and she's got inflation.  Now she's making the same absurd prediction about not seeing a recession.

It's a sorry end to a supposedly respected economist.  It comes of being a true believer.  In Owen Ullmann's just-released biography of Yellen, a little story stood out to the New York Post, pointing out that she was willing to dump a fifty-year friendship with an old college friend over the fact that the latter had voted for Donald Trump.  She could dump friends with ease over politics, and, well, she could dump economics, too.  She certainly has, and the Biden administration has made a shambles of the supposedly bright economist she might have been in the past, but certainly isn't now. 

Image: Twitter screen shot.