Dear editor:
On occasion, as an exercise in self-amusement, I will trifle with conceptualizing one event as a metaphor for some yet-to-be outcome.
I found this to be the case when, on Saturday, Feb. 4, I heard news reports that a suspected Chinese spy balloon, flying at an elevation of 60,000 feet, had been shot down off the coast of South Carolina by a US fighter jet’s air-to-air missile.
Per government reports, the balloon was first detected over Alaska a week earlier, and the Chinese Foreign Ministry claimed it to be a weather balloon used for scientific research and it had blown off course.
However, our military had determined that the balloon’s payload was equipment not associated with standard meteorological activities but rather surveillance materials and that its flight path coincidentally coincided with a route crossing many potentially sensitive military sites.
President Biden’s authorization for a takedown issued on Wednesday was to occur once undue risk to American lives from falling debris no longer existed.
At the time of this writing, Navy and Coast Guard vessels are engaged in debris collection some six miles east of the South Carolina coast. With that in mind, I asked myself might this bursting of one’s (Chinese spy) balloon ironically be a foreshadowing of some stormy weather ahead?
A day earlier, on Feb. 3, President Biden had offered remarks on data released by the Department of Labor stating that 517,000 jobs were added in January, dropping the unemployment rate to 3.4%. Taking full credit that his policies are working, Biden stated “America’s job machine is going stronger than ever…America is back to work.”
Not to deflate Biden’s unabashed hubris, I nevertheless regard the January Jobs Report to be an outlier compared to previous job reports. Moreover, a surging jobs market could result in a wage-price spiral wherein higher wages drive prices up and, in turn, fuel inflation. And if the Fed persists in stifling inflation by cooling the labor market through continuing hikes in interest rates, the economy could be pushed into recession.
To date, the White House owns no responsibility that the trillions of dollars in new spending approved by Congressional Democrats and signed into law by President Biden over the past two years has played any role in inflation spiking. What happens when such rarefied air becomes too thin?
Peter Wibell, Rutledge