Fortune magazine ran one of the dumbest liberal takes on inflation yet. Its propaganda piece even puts fraudulent economists like Paul Krugman to shame.
The liberal magazine had the audacity to publish a tone-deaf inflation story with the headline: “Why you should be happy about inflation and worried about something else, top economist Brad DeLong says.” The magazine pushed the insane propaganda of University of California, Berkeley Professor Brad DeLong who reportedly said that so-called “‘reopening inflation’” has “‘so far been a very good thing.’” The liberal rag continued: “DeLong argues that there is a major economic shift taking place that people should welcome. It all has to do with our strange but kind of wonderful post-pandemic economy.”
The take was so ridiculous that the magazine’s tweet of the story got heavily ratioed on Twitter, with over 950 comments and only over 430 likes so far. Ami Magazine Senior White House Correspondent Jake Turx didn’t pull any punches: “Hey @FortuneMagazine, your ‘top financial historian’ is clearly a moron. Send @delong and this ignorant propaganda back to the 1930s where it belongs instead of using it to taunt millions of people who are hurting.”
Hey @FortuneMagazine, your "top financial historian" is clearly a moron. Send @delong and this ignorant propaganda back to the 1930s where it belongs instead of using it to taunt millions of people who are hurting. https://t.co/71tH8T4IUy
— Jake K. Turx (@JakeTurx) September 21, 2022
Even Fortune had to hedge in the first line of the story: “How could high inflation possibly be good?” Fortune continued undercutting its own headline before even getting to DeLong’s argument: “Not only are you paying more for stuff than a year ago, but the consistently higher-than-expected readings in the Consumer Price Index continue to devastate the stock market, sending the S&P 500 down over 1,000 points on Tuesday, its worst day since June 2020.”
But then Fortune spun itself silly by patronizing its own readers. “One of America’s top financial historians says this moment calls for a lesson in economics,” the story declared. Yikes. Inflation topped August expectations of eight percent to hit 8.3 percent year-over-year, bolstered by rent prices spiking to their highest levels since 1991 and food prices rising a staggering 11.4 percent, the largest increase since May 1979. Yet Fortune patronized its readers telling them not to believe what’s right in front of them.
FLASHBACK: Saturday Night Live Mocked Inflation Spin Narratives in 1978
The magazine wielded DeLong in a desperate attempt to put lipstick on this ugly pig of an economy:
Inflation in the U.S. is currently serving two functions that could help the economy in the long run, according to DeLong: helping expand new economic sectors poised for big growth, and uncovering and optimizing supply chain snags that have been with us since the beginning of the pandemic.
Fortune buried the real truth about the state of the economy in the 20th paragraph: “Expectations that inflation will become entrenched in the economy and stick around might become a self-fulfilling prophecy, which would lead to something even worse for the economy. The word for that is stagflation: the worst-case scenario of slow economic growth combined with high inflation. DeLong says it is still very possible.” [Emphasis added.]
DeLong even conceded that, “'Worst of all is you get stuck in the stagflation of the 1970s.'” He continued: “‘If inflation gets entrenched in expectations, it will be a very bad thing.’” Fortune even admitted that “not every economist shares DeLong’s view that there is much good at all about the current inflation, with many saying it is a much more pressing issue that the government is failing to adequately control.” [Emphasis added.]
No kidding Sherlock!
Conservatives are under attack. Contact Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell at alyson.shontell@fortune.com and demand the publication quit trying to sell inflation as a good thing.
