[coolso]

Can someone fact check the “Putin price hike” angle or are all the debunkers on vacay this administration? I do recall months and months of extremely high inflation and gas prices $1.50/gal more than they were two years ago, prior to any “Russian interference” in our economy via the war in Ukraine. Is the media really going to let Biden get away with this? Because I don’t think anyone in the real world is really buying it.

[memish]

Fact check: Mostly false. Inflation and overall cost of living (housing anyone?) has been increasing significantly for over a year prior to the invasion.

[abvdasker]

In retrospect it looks like wishful thinking, but for a while I held out hope that the transition to white collar remote work during COVID would be permanent so all that empty office space could be converted into residential. Might have gone a long way towards addressing inflation and the housing crisis, but I guess we'll never know what could have been.

[abeppu]

I think a lot of people had this thought in passing. But

- a lot of space that was empty was still under long term commercial leases

- there was less demand to live in some of the cities that had a glut of office space, and especially those neighborhoods

- would a lot of office buildings even make good residential buildings? I don't think this could be a fast or cheap conversion in most cases

[beeboop]

In Seattle there is plenty of office space that was previously residential. Seems likely that this happens everywhere. I'm sure changing it back wouldn't be too bad.

[bsder]

The problem is that all the commercial real estate has clauses that you can tack missing rent onto the end of the contract but lower rent adjusts the basis so you have to cough up cash.

This means that it is almost always better to have an empty space than an occupied one that you lowered the rent on--I've seen quite a bit of commercial real estate unoccupied for going on 5+ years now.

This merry-go-round will continue until everything crashes simultaneously.

[skeeter2020]

In my market there is an absolute glut of condo and apartment new housing, with more coming on the market because the lead time is so long. It's single family residential in the burbs that has seen the huge increase and commercial conversions don't address this.

[memish]

WeWork could rebrand to WeHome.

[nradov]

Converting a high rise office building to residential is possible but expensive. Usually you have to gut the interior and completely rebuild. Water, sewer, and gas may need to be reconfigured and upgraded.

[thaumasiotes]

> so all that empty office space could be converted into residential

What would be the point? The residential demand is only there because that's where the offices are.

[cudgy]

Cities are more than just offices and work centers.

[thaumasiotes]

Yes, they're also a bunch of support services for the offices and work centers.

But the support has no reason to exist without the offices. The offices are the cause, and everything else is the effect.

[cudgy]

The chicken or the egg? Without people nearby, you’ll have no offices/jobs. Without jobs, you’ll have no people is your argument. I prefer the former cause and effect as more plausible mainly due to simple financial returns. Who is going justify from a financial returns perspective building an office where there are few people? Nowadays offices are even less impactful with technology and a worldwide, scattered workforce facilitating working in homes and/or smaller satellite offices. Large, central office hubs are in big trouble.

[rvba]

Quantitavie easing: money created of of thin air to buy stock to "keep prices" -> this money goes to other markets (commodities, houses..) and causes bubbles.

Small people screwed about it the most. Most literallu gain nothing in this wealth redistribution scheme.

There are other factors too.

[azth]

They're using him to scapegoat their incompetencies. Everyone with an ounce of critical thinking was able to see that money printing will cause this. "Transitory inflation" yeah right.

[skippyboxedhero]

The US isn't really exposed to Russian gas prices. Nat gas prices are pretty low in the US, although converging with global prices as the US exports grow, because of fracking. Food prices are up, but not to a huge extent.

The noticeable thing in the US, relative to the rest of the world, is the level of fiscal and monetary stimulus. This wasn't only Biden, it was thrown into the economy at a time of significant supply shortages and when people were suddenly accumulating large cash balances. It is a crazy situation. Obviously, prices will rise and soak up all that excess demand but: inflation near 10%, interest rates 1%...wow, it is impossible to look at that and conclude anything other than politics has totally debauched monetary policy.

It is also entertaining to go back and read the views of some people (the usual candidates) who were loudly insisting that inflation wasn't going to rise, then that is would be temporary, then that is was due to Putin...this should impress upon the public that economists don't know better, they have no credibility (extraordinary given that the economic logic has dictated policy for close to three decades, they were regarded as omnipotent by politicians).

[jawilson2]

How is President Biden affecting inflation and gas prices in, e.g., Europe? Crude futures were in line with pre-pandemic prices in early 2022, then they spiked in March. Along with Ags and Nat Gas futures.

[RspecMAuthortah]

President Biden may not, but Fed certainly is. Remember with the eurodollar system, Fed's role at this point is pretty much a liquidity provider for anyone and everyone which they did with unconditional access to swap lines etc. since April 2020 injecting trillions of dollars of liquidity into the system. The inflation we are seeing right now is largely a by-product of that. Fed with its utterly irresponsible course of acts over the past two years is directly responsible for this crisis. Their choice at this point is doomed to crash the US economy with recession if they want to do anything measurable to fight inflation. Which if they end up doing, will largely invalidate their mandate of full employment and thus the validity of their existence.

With regards to President Biden, he will have to be held responsible for applying all out sanctions which have not been able to achieve their objectives. If the goal of the sanctions was to stop the war, that has not happened in last 45 days. We don't know how difficult life has been for the average Joe in Russia from those sanction bites due to the censorship in media in both west and Russia. It certainly has however affected the life of the average Joe here and not for good. But, we are told this is at the expense of our moral victory.

[somewhereoutth]

Not to stop the war, but to degrade Russia's ability to prosecute it and any future aggression. We should be doing everything that stays short of the nuclear trigger to destroy Putin's war machine.

[brimble]

That right there. Sanctions like this are meant to make prosecuting a war more expensive, so make ending the war more appealing, but also to make it harder to recover from e.g. battlefield losses of equipment, and to otherwise make further military buildup slower and more difficult, if the war keeps going for any length of time. In a case like this, they're not just "to stop the war", at least not immediately, even if that would be considered a great outcome. They haven't necessarily failed if they don't bring a swift end to the war, even if that'd be considered ideal.

[bloodyplonker22]

Just look at all the crazy federal spending proposals from Biden that Manchin had to block.

[UncleOxidant]

Inflation was baked in even prior to the pandemic. Biden bears little blame here. The previous president was starting trade wars that were already starting to blow up supply chains even before covid. The Fed with it's years of loose money policy, the previous president (who, in addition to trade wars, also blew up the deficit at a time when it should have been reduced) and of course covid deserve most of the blame. There's not a whole lot Biden can do to stop this inflation, it's up to the Fed but I doubt they'll take decisive enough action. These puny 1/4% rate increases aren't going to do anything anywhere near fast enough. We need to take the medicine that Dr. Volcker would prescribe were he here.

[thomascgalvin]

Putin is partially responsible, but it seems like we're in a perfect storm of price increases. The entire supply chain was disrupted by COVID, and we still haven't fixed all of it. That is almost certainly a bigger factor than the invasion of Ukraine.

[mistrial9]

can we just get rid of the obvious "scapegoating" and look at the real, actual causes?

[cudgy]

What about the Biden administration itself being responsible for cornering Putin with talk of Ukraine joining NATO, which Putin stated many times was a red line. Furthermore, US had agreed to not push NATO farther east, but its actions were in complete opposition to that agreement.

Biden administration has cornered themselves as well into an unnecessary conflict with little chance of an exit ramp. Dangerous stuff.

[supertrope]

Comrade when you egregiously break your promises you cannot expect others to keep acting the same way toward you. https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/what-putin-fears-most/

[cudgy]

“The more serious cause of tensions has been a series of democratic breakthroughs and popular protests for freedom throughout the 2000s, what many refer to as the “Color Revolutions.” Putin believes that Russian national interests have been threatened by what he portrays as U.S.-supported coups. After each of them—Serbia in 2000, Georgia in 2003, Ukraine in 2004, the Arab Spring in 2011, Russia in 2011–12, and Ukraine in 2013–14—Putin has pivoted to more hostile policies toward the United States, and then invoked the NATO threat as justification for doing so.”

“These episodes of substantive Russia-NATO cooperation undermine the argument that NATO expansion has always and continuously been the driver of Russia’s confrontation with the West over the last thirty years.”

The article you linked is all over the place with its reasoning. How does it reconcile the two above points? There is a great deal of hand waving with a sole focus on democratic models of government…sounds straight out of the CIA playbook that attempted to justify the US tangled up in so many conflicts for the sake of democracy.

Also, who said NATO expansion has always been the driver of confrontation?

And finally, Ukraine is and has been a far cry from an independent democracy. It is a fractious country that has clear divisions of tribal and ethnic conflict. Their elections and politics have been heavily influenced by Russia and the United States. Biden has been at the center of heavy US influence in a huge country that has been the source of many wars against Russia for centuries. Ignoring the perspective of Russia and only focusing on democracy is critically short-sighted.

[vmception]

They're all levers, interconnected. Pull one lever and many others are slightly tugged as well.

"Putin Price hike" is just alliteration, its not scapegoating everything on Putin, its reducing the expected constriction of energy on the market to the geopolitical catalyst in response to Putin's actions. This constriction is not nearly as heavy as it could be, with mostly just a few large US/EU private sector companies choosing not to trade Russian oil and gas right now. The oil and gas is not sanctioned right now. Even this explanation is the beginning of a dissertation that will be irrelevant in a few weeks, so it might make more sense why a reductive 3 word phrase is chosen.

Of course they're going to get away with this. It is politically unfavorable to say "our actions rose gas prices". If the media is operating in your favor just go for it.

If you wanted an indication that some actual humans understood the doublespeak, well now you know that I do, and largely don't care. I follow the macroeconomic environment pretty closely, politicians are a lever too.

Where I'm currently at is that Biden/the US taking action to try to flood the market with their oil reserves and bring down prices is going to be mostly show, as the oil reserves will just need to be topped up again and very quickly. So this means supply and demand for oil has not changed at all, not even in the near term. The market via oil prices is still digesting what the price should be in light of Russian's actions and has not finished even doing that, with an initial overreaction (margin call) and just settling in the $93/barrel range for now. I don't think US oil reserves, for example, is having any effect on that. Just a small tangent to show how I think, in light of political speak which I consider benign and not relevant enough to be as passionate about as you are.

[AnimalMuppet]

Well, where I am gas is $1/gal higher than it was in March. That's down to Putin/Ukraine/sanctions and all that. That's going to show up in as a big inflation bump.

Now, inflation was up before that, definitely, in a way that it hadn't been since 2008. But it got a bit spur from Putin's non-war war.

[naoqj]

It’s down to sanctions only.

[outside1234]

It sort of a perfect storm from where I sit:

* Trump tax cuts contribute to deficit and demand

* COVID stimulus contribute to deficit and demand

* COVID causes supply shortages, with same demand, so therefore higher prices (see markups on cars).

* Putin has to go and make it worse with an invasion, pushing up energy costs, which are part of the cost of everything.

[zthrowaway]

Mostly false. These trillion dollar spending bills have caused this.

[exabrial]

> or are all the debunkers on vacay this administration

On vacation unfortunately. Even HNrs appear married to their political parties.