Jared Bernstein: American Consumers Tell Us the Cost of Living Was Already ‘Unaffordable to Them’ Before the Iran War

RUSH EXCERPT:

BERNSTEIN: “Well, you have to really talk about a tale of two economies here. We’ve had a very resilient overall or macro economy. And you’re absolutely right. It’s busted through all kinds of constraints. But time, American consumers were telling us that the cost of living was really stressing them out and that life was already unaffordable to them. And that’s pre-war what this administration has done, in fact, what they did, again, pre-war with their tariffs, was to already make the prices of the imports that folks buy go up. Well, now they’ve turned that same magic to the price of energy. And as we’ve heard, good, good conversation with senator peters, that price isn’t just a price at the pump. It bleeds into food prices. I noticed today, because of the inflationary pressures we’re seeing on interest rates, that the 30 year mortgage rate has gone up from just below 6% to 6.5% in just a few weeks. That’s a huge jump. So these are some of the spillovers we’re seeing exacerbating an already existing affordability crisis.”