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It's telling that you feel condescended to by the presentation of facts.

Well, actually, in that case it's even more impressive since they have so little but give relatively so much. Especially considering that they don't even come close to sharing a border with Russia and aren't directly threatened by it.

Did you think about adjusting these figures for population? For instance there are almost twice as many Japanese as Brits yet Japan doesn't even have 50% more millionaires. And while the UK has about 81% as many residents as Germany, it has 84% as many millionaires.

It's funny. Just today I cited how Republicans created the strong economy under Bill Clinton to measures taken by Ronald Reagan. I call it wormhole economic theory. Somehow the effects of Reagan's programs bypassed the Bush years and surfaced 2 years after Clinton was elected. Now in your case it's the A&E of Obama's early years somehow tunneled through the Trump years and surfaced now. Can you provide a mechanism of how that works? For most of the last 10 years inflation was hovering at around 2%. Just maybe, just possibly you might look at more proximate causes for the sharp jump in prices. For one things, Covid created a shift in demand away from services and towards good. Unfortunately, given labor shortages and supply disruptions the supply of goods couldn't keep up with demand. What happens when demand outpaces supplies? Things like used car prices selling for more than the list price of new ones because new cars just aren't available. Also, there's a war going on and supplies of energy have been restricted. As for US petroleum supply. I guess you're not aware that unlike Saudi Arabia, or the UAE or Russia, oil companies are not official or defacto arms of the govt. So they can't be ordered by the govt to increase supplies. In the case of oil companies prices really weren't high enough to justify drilling in increasingly cost sites. "Crude oil prices have generally increased since April 2020, resulting in increased crude oil production." https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=51318#:~:text=We forecast that crude oil production in the United States,Federal Offshore Gulf of Mexico. In the case of natural gas it was even worse with major companies going out of business because of the low prices. As I've noted elsewhere, people like you seem to believe that all you have to do is stick a spigot in the ground and out comes petroleum or gas or both. They take time. . In fact, drilling and production is picking up in response to demand. "We forecast that crude oil production in the United States will rise by 630,000 b/d in 2023 to average 12.6 million b/d. We expect more than 80% of that crude oil production growth to come from the Lower 48 states (L48), which does not include production from Alaska and the Federal Offshore Gulf of Mexico. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=51318#:~:text=We forecast that crude oil production in the United States,Federal Offshore Gulf of Mexico.

And who are "they" exactly? And how exactly will this sinister organization use its enablers?

You seem to believe that predictions are evidence. I got news for you. They're not.

It's a fact that if a President is in power when economic time are tough, then generally his party suffers during midterms. But just because a President is in power when economic times are tough, doesn't mean that he's the cause of them. And I would remind you that Donald Trump pulled a much more amazing feat by leading his party to midterm disaster when the economy was doing well.

What do you mean by "demonstrate who they are and what they do?" Give an example of what you're after.

You mean if he said the world's economic situation was his fault, that would make it so?

I got news for you, the world economy is troubled now. Inflation is far from confined to the USA. And somehow this is Biden's fault?

Exactly how have Green policies affected oil production? Oil companies went on a leasing spree under the Trump adminstration which virtually gave away huge amount of land potentially rich in oil and gas. If they didn't drill for it then that maybe was because it didn't make economic sense. They are still holding on to all those leases. And production is now increasing. Of course, if you have a problem with green policies reducing demand, could you explain why you think that's a problem? You think reducing demand for oil and gas is a bad thing?

Probably the lowest and least intelligent form of comment in this forum is one based on an avatar name. To have to resort to that means you've got nothing useful to contribute.

The thing is, Trump inherited an economy that was doing well and kept on doing even better. Despite that, he managed to have really low ratings. Now that was an amazing achievement!

Well, it cerainly true that corporate interests are stronger than ever in dictating what the State does. And what side of the political spectrum has been most enthusiastic about enriching corporations and enhancing their political power?

You're right. There is no excuse for the lies told by the right wing about the dangers of vaccination. Or are you going to claim it's mainly liberals casting doubt on vaccinations? And you really think Republican politicians have been far more lackadasical about promoting vaccinations because vaccinations are a popular cause with their constituency? You think all those unmasked people attending Trump rallies indoors and outdoors were outliers? And finally, you think that by doubting highly respected source, in effect claiming possible fake news, you are actually making valid points?

I am kind of surprised to see Greece so high up on that list.

My comment about Johnson actually had a point. At the end of the day it's the how much a country gives Ukraine that's going to count, not how much its leader loves Ukraine.

That does sound like quite a lot. 700 million sounds a lot more like it. Thanks for catching the error.

Where he could have made an important photo op. Maybe he could also fly to Korea and take a stroll with Kim Jong Un. America may have plenty of oil but as you clearly don't recall, the price of oil has been very low for the past several years so not a lot of inducement to drill. You may find this hard to believe but oil companies are mainly in it for the money. Not so much for the joy of drilling. For natural gas the situation was even worse. Do you think you can just plug a spigot into the ground and oil or gas comes gushing out?

If inflation eats all of it that means that those who have large quantities of cash on hand, don't see opportunities for investment. During the recession, banks and other large insititutions were actually accepting negative interest rates because they had nowhere to go with their money. This surplus of cash reflects the way the rich and the powerful have gotten laws passed that result in them paying lower and lower taxes. This is why we have seen massive inflation in beach houses and art works. Things that are inherently scarce. It also explains the rise of cryptocurrencies. Too much cash chasing too few investments.

This is utterly irrelevant to your argument about fiat currency. People who have money to invest, mostly don't hold it in fiat currency. For the rest, currency isn't an investment. It's a medium of exchange. And they can count themselves doing well if the amount of currency the have at their disposal gives them greater purchasing power than they had before.

The price of oil starting zooming upwards in mid 2020. And there isn't a free market in oil. There's a cartel.

Land and shares are measured in dollars. As far as I know, the amount of dollars that land and shares are worth tends to outpace inflation. So what's your point?

That is utterly false. We know that because death rates in pro trump regions and anti-trump regions were very close until the advent of vaccines. Then they started to diverge drastically: Pro-Trump counties now have far higher COVID death rates. Misinformation is to blame NPR looked at deaths per 100,000 people in roughly 3,000 counties across the U.S. from May 2021, the point at which vaccinations widely became available. People living in counties that went 60% or higher for Trump in November 2020 had 2.73 times the death rates of those that went for Biden. Counties with an even higher share of the vote for Trump saw higher COVID-19 mortality rates. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/12/05/1059828993/data-vaccine-misinformation-trump-counties-covid-death-rate But what would any rational person expect given that Republicans were far less likely to get vaccinated than Democrats KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor: The Increasing Importance of Partisanship in Predicting COVID-19 Vaccination Status https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/importance-of-partisanship-predicting-vaccination-status/

OK. For what it's worth.