They can’t keep up this charade against Joe Biden forever

Attention Palmer Report readers: sign up for our free mailing list here
-----
Note from Bill Palmer: if each of you reading this can kick in $10 or $25, it'll help keep Palmer Report firing on all cylinders at this crucial time in our nation's history: Donate now


Here’s the funny thing about all the big headlines this week about how gas prices are still “soaring” nationwide: it’s simply not true. All you have to do is go to a site like GasBuddy.com and click on the recent charts to see that average gas prices in the United States have actually been declining for the past two weeks.

Yes, it’s a minor decline. But the trend is nonetheless clear: average gas prices are not rising, they’re falling. Whether President Biden’s efforts to reduce gas prices are working, or whether market forces are resolving the matter in their own right, the fact is that gas prices have been going down since the middle of the month. Moreover, this trend points to the probability (not certainty, but probability) that gas prices will continue on their current downward trend, absent some new and unexpected market force.

Yet even as gas prices have been going down for the past two weeks, large chunks of the mainstream media have continued to try to milk the “gas prices are soaring” narrative, because it’s been a ratings-friendly one. Nevermind that it’s no longer true, of course.

AAA announced the day before Thanksgiving that U.S. gas prices had “stabilize[d]” and that there was now “downward pressure on prices.” Yet in the same timeframe as AAA’s announcement, major news outlets including USA Today and NBC News ran headlines about “soaring” gas prices.

The good news is that, as more Americans see their local gas prices continuing to drop and they get the sense that the national averages can’t still be rising, the media will have to drop this narrative. This comes even as overall supply chain issues are easing, and employment numbers are historically strong. The Biden economy is a strong and growing one, and sooner or later the media will have to admit as much.

Attention Palmer Report readers: sign up for our free mailing list here
-----
Note from Bill Palmer: if each of you reading this can kick in $10 or $25, it'll help keep Palmer Report firing on all cylinders at this crucial time in our nation's history: Donate now