“It seems to me this administration is alienating the very demographics that got them elected in the first place.”
On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky left the United States without securing a significant military aid package for his country, having to instead be satisfied with $200 million worth of old equipment from the Defense Department’s stocks.
Speaking to Sputnik’s Fault Lines, economist Mark Frost explained how the economic situation in the United States is making further aid to Ukraine untenable politically.
“I’m an economist. I’m not known for analyzing political sentiment but just anecdotally […] people who used to be hawks are now doing a second take, saying ‘wait a minute, what are we getting for this?’” Frost explained. “It seems to me this administration is alienating the very demographics that got them elected in the first place […] folks are saying “okay, we’re citizens, why don’t we matter?’”
Frost also told hosts Jamarl Thomas and Melik Abdul that if US President Joe Biden gets the $60 billion or more that he requested from Congress for Ukraine, “it would be the largest transfer of wealth to a country since World War II.”
The United States has squandered the opportunity it had to focus on internal issues after the Cold War, Frost added.
“I’m waiting for my peace dividends,” Frost explained. “Folks old enough to remember what it was like when the wall came down on the Soviet Union, we all were happy, at least most of us were. […] ‘Finally, this stupid Cold War that wastes so many resources [is over], we can reduce our military expenditures now, we can keep a credible nuclear threat, keep a reasonable Army, Air Force and Navy and now we can concentrate on our internal problems, we don’t have the boogie man of the USSR anymore to worry about.’ And it never, ever happened.”
The money spent on Ukraine and its coming collapse will be a “driving issue” in the 2024 Presidential election, Frost added. He then noted that in addition to hard economic indicators that are pointing downwards, the behaviors of the people on the street are even more troubling.
“I run the local Humane Society here and pet abandonments are at an all-time high. People show up and say ‘I can’t afford my cats and dogs, can you take them?’ and that tells me, combined with all the macroeconomic leading indicators that we’re heading into a severe recession, to the point where you might even use the depression word, and if that happens[…] no one is going to care about Iran.”
Frost, who said that he has voted for more Democrats in his life than Republicans, explained that what the Biden administration has done since taking office makes no sense from a macroeconomic perspective. “This administration gets an ‘F’ in macroeconomics. I’m trying to think of anything they’ve done that has made economic sense with respect to doing what’s best for the country. I cannot think of another administration that has been worse,” Frost said.
Thomas asked Frost about US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen’s comments that the US economy was coming in for a “soft landing” after two years of historic inflation.
“I have no doubt that Janet Yellen’s people are going to land soft. I have zero doubt I’m going to land soft,” Frost explained. “The problem is, we are going to have 40-50 million Americans that are going to land really hard and probably 10 million of them are just going to splatter on the concrete.”
“What are they trying to do, what is the endgame here?” Frost asked. “I cannot understand it because everything we are doing, to me, is economic suicide.” He added that he does not believe the official rate of inflation, which has fallen to 3%. “Remember when the government is measuring this, they use economic tricks, and they weigh certain variables,” Frost explained. “If they determine something is ‘volatile’ then they weigh that lower in the averaging process than they do something that they say is stable, but if you look at regular people’s expenditures on bacon, eggs, stuff like that, the prices are still going up.”
Frost said that negative inflation, or deflation, would “make macroeconomic sense right now.”
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