Billionaire Citadel CEO Ken Griffin bashed President Joe Biden’s lofty Bidenomics agenda for under-delivering on the economic growth he promised — instead saddling the nation with higher taxes, falling income and sticky inflation.
“The American public knows things aren’t working in this economy for them,” Griffin told Bloomberg at the Global Macro Conference in Miami on Tuesday.
“I mean, whoever told him to run on Bidenomics has no idea how to read an economics textbook,” he added, noting that consumer prices have increased almost 20% since Biden took office.
October’s Consumer Price Index — a key measure of inflation — rose 3.2% on an annual basis, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported, marking a stunning 17.62% increase compared to January 2021, when Biden took office.
In that same time period, the average hourly earnings for US employees declined 3.32%, from $11.43 in January 2021 to $11.05 just last month, according to Fox Business.
“It’s working for no one. This is the price of bad economic policies,” Griffin said.
Biden has also been consistently claiming that Bidenomics will “reduce the [government’s] deficit,” though the recently released Treasury data showed the red ink has doubled over the past year, from about $1 trillion to $2 trillion (yes, with a “T”).
Last month, the US government posted a $1.695 trillion budget deficit in fiscal 2023, a 23% jump from the prior year as revenues fell and outlays for Social Security, Medicare and record-high interest costs on the federal debt rose.
The fiscal year 2022 deficit was $1.375 trillion.
The US’s fiscal binge must be reined in as the country is “spending on the government level like a drunken sailor,” Griffin said last week at an event in Singapore.
The figures are unsustainable, according to the 55-year-old hedge fund titan, and mark a major return to ballooning deficits after back-to-back declines during President Biden’s first two years in office.
Surging inflation, meanwhile, will increase the cost of funding the US deficit, he warned.
“The peace dividend is clearly at the end of the road,” Griffin said, nodding to international conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
“We are likely to see higher real rates and we’re likely to see higher nominal rates,” he added.
Griffin — who’s worth a reported $35.5 billion, per Bloomberg estimates — dumped $60 million into Republican campaigns during the 2022 election cycle, including to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ successful reelection campaign.
Representatives for Citadel declined to comment beyond Griffin’s commentary.
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