Saturday 14 May 2022 02:49 PM Jeff Bezos calls on Biden's new disinformation board to review his tweet about ... trends now
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos asked the Biden Administration's new Disinformation Board to review the president's tweet claiming that growing inflation could be tamed by raising corporate taxes.
Joe Biden, who has faced criticism over the 40-year high rates which hit 8.3 percent, tweeted on Friday that taxing corporations more would help ease the economic strain impacting Americans.
'You want to bring down inflation? Let's make sure the wealthiest corporations pay their fair share,' Biden tweeted.
Bezos responded within hours, claiming the president was conflating two seperate issues that only amounted to misdirection, and should be held accountable by the Department of Homeland Security's Disinformation Board.
'The newly created Disinformation Board should review this tweet, or maybe they need to form a new Non Sequitur Board instead,' Bezos tweeted.
'Raising corp taxes is fine to discuss. Taming inflation is critical to discuss. Mushing them together is just misdirection.'
President Joe Biden claimed that raising corporate taxes would help tackle inflation
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said the president's claim were just misdirection and called on DHS's new Disinformation Board to review Biden's tweet
Inflation is as high as it's been in 40 years as Biden has appeared to lay the blame on corporate taxes and on Russia's invasion of Ukraine
The Disinformation Board was established last month to combat the spread of disinformation in minority communities and to provides communities with resources and tools to help prevent individuals from radicalizing to violence.
The board, however, has drawn much criticism as it was estblished ahead of the 2022 midterms, where the president's party is expected to suffer major losses, and appears hypocritcal as the Biden administration has been slammed for trying to spin issues in their favor.
The administration had previously claimed that the war in Ukraine was causing inflation and gas prices to soar despite both already being significantly high prior to Russia's invasion.
Rather than corporate taxes, interest rates have been sighted as the key figure to reign in to bring down inflation.
The Federal Reserve has begun raising interest rates to slow borrowing and spending enough to cool inflation following the height of the pandemic.
'Inflation is much too high, and we understand the hardship it is causing, and we are moving expeditiously to bring it back down,' Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said on earlier this week.
Inflation began to soar in April 2021, meaning that annual increases are now starting from a higher base level
In an interview with Marketplace on Thursday, he was asked what he would say to someone who will lose their job or miss out on a pay rise as the Fed tried to choke off inflationary spending.
'So I would say that we fully understand and appreciate how painful inflation is, and that we have the tools and the resolve to get it down to two percent, and that we’re going to do that.
'I will also say that the process of getting inflation down to two percent will also include some pain, but ultimately the most painful thing would be if we were to fail to deal with it and inflation were to get entrenched in the economy at high levels, and we know what that’s like.
'And that’s just people losing the value of their paycheck to high inflation and, ultimately, we’d have to go through a much deeper downturn. And so we really need to avoid that.'
The Labor Department's report on Wednesday said that the consumer price index increased 0.3 percent in April from the month before, for a 8.3 percent gain from a year ago, compared to March's 8.5 percent increase.
The food index increased 9.4 percent from last year, the largest 12-month increase since 1981, and the energy index soared 30.3 percent from a year ago.
Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called 'core' inflation hit 6.3 percent in the 12 months ending in April, down slightly from March's annual rate of 6.5 percent.
However, in a troubling sign inflation is becoming more entrenched, core prices jumped 0.6 percent from March to April - twice the 0.3 percent rise from February to March.
Those increases were fueled by spiking prices for airline tickets, hotel rooms and new cars. Rental costs also rose sharply.
Along with inflation,
