A key measure of inflation reached a 30-year high last month, data released Friday by the Commerce Department showed.
Excluding food and energy, consumer prices were 3.5 percent higher last month than they were in June 2020, the briskest pace of inflation since the summer of 1991 and an acceleration from a month ago.
The data comes from the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ personal consumption expenditure price index, which is the index used by the Fed in its inflation targeting and projections.
The better-known Consumer Price Index, which is produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, came in at 4.5 percent in June. That was also nearly a 30 year high.
The two indexes tend to follow the same path over time, although they are composed using different data sets on divergent bundles of goods and services. The Fed switched from CPI to the PCE two decades ago after deciding that it was a better gauge of prices in the economy. CPI tends to show more inflation than the PCE index.
The overall PCE index rose 4 percent from a year ago, matching the rise in May at the highest since 2008.
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HOW THE BANKSTERS’ RENT BOY JOE BIDEN HELPED STRIP BANKRUPTCY PROTECTION FROM MILLIONS JUST BEFORE THE RECESSION THE BIG BANKSTERS CAUSED
Biden and Elizabeth Warren have been fighting each other since the 2005 bankruptcy bill.
BY LUKE DARB Y
During the most recent Democratic presidential primary debate, Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren had an awkward and tense exchange over the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The friction between the two of them goes back quite a ways, long before Biden was vice president and Warren became a senator in Massachusetts. The two first butted heads over Biden's support of bankruptcy reform in the late 1990s and early 2000s, back when he represented Delaware in the Senate.
The key detail is the difference between the two kinds of bankruptcy a person can declare: Chapter 7 and Chapter 13. Chapter 7 is known as liquidation bankruptcy and is meant for people with limited income. It allows them sell off what assets they can to pay creditors and then discharge most of the rest of their debts relatively quickly. In contrast, Chapter 13, reorganizing bankruptcy, puts the debtor on a payment plan, so a portion their future income is guaranteed to go to paying back their creditors. If you're a creditor, this is the option you would rather someone take when they owe you money, since you're going to get more out of them over the long run.
The 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) was meant, on paper, to prevent people from abusing Chapter 7 bankruptcy. It accomplished that through means testing, making it harder for people to declare Chapter 7 bankruptcy versus Chapter 13. If a person's income exceeds a certain threshold, they're ineligible for declaring Chapter 7. The bill also required people to complete a credit counseling course no more than 180 days before they declare bankruptcy. It also limits the kinds of debt a person can discharge through bankruptcy: If they use a credit card to spend too much money on "luxury goods" or withdraw too much in cash advances, that credit line can't be erased. And, gallingly, the bill made it completely impossible to discharge student loan debt. It may very well be the single piece of legislation most responsible for putting the U.S. in the current student debt crisis.
Biden was one of the bill's major Democratic champions, and he fought for its passage from his position on the Senate Judiciary Committee . He had pushed for two earlier bankruptcy reform bills in 2000 and 2001, both of which failed. But in 2005, BAPCPA made it through, successfully erecting all kinds of roadblocks for Americans struggling with debt, and doing so just before the financial crisis of 2008. Since BAPCPA passed, Chapter 13 filings went from representing just 24 percent of all bankruptcy filings per year to 39 percent in 2017. Melissa Jacoby, a University of North Carolina law professor specializing in bankruptcy, told Politico , "I doubt that the bill reined in the abuses that the bill was premised on, in part because they didn’t necessarily exist in the first place."
Unions, consumer protection groups, and the National Organization for Women all opposed the BAPCPA, but it had heavy support from the credit card industry. Delaware is essentially a domestic tax haven for corporations, and as a result financial institutions like credit card companies hold tremendous power in the state. As political writer Alexander Cockburn once wrote , "The first duty of any senator from Delaware is to do the bidding of the banks and large corporations which use the tiny state as a drop box and legal sanctuary. Biden has never failed his masters in this primary task. Find any bill that sticks it to the ordinary folk on behalf of the Money Power and you’ll likely detect Biden’s hand at work."
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Biden at the time stressed that he wasn't acting on behalf of the credit card companies, and as Matt Ygelsias writes at Vox , Biden's camp claims now that BAPCPA was an effort to get some concessions out of a Republican bill that would have been a bigger disaster without his intervention. But to his critics, there were red flags. For example, one of the biggest credit card companies in Delaware, MBNA, hired Joe Biden's son Hunter in 1996. Even after Hunter became a federal lobbyist in 2001, he stayed on at MBNA as a consultant at a fee of $100,000 per year , meaning he was pulling in a six-figure salary at the same time his father was pushing for the industry's top priorities. Biden's interests were so aligned with MBNA's that in 1999 he was forced to defend himself by declaring , "I am not the senator from MBNA." But even without the shadows of impropriety, critics of Biden's support for bankruptcy reform had plenty of fodder.
One of Biden's biggest antagonists was none other than Elizabeth Warren. Back when she was a mere Harvard law professor specializing in bankruptcy law, Warren questioned the entire rationale of bankruptcy reform, telling The Washington Post in 1998, "Those who want to say the way to solve rising consumer bankruptcy is by changing the law are the same people who would have said during a malaria epidemic that the way to cut down on hospital admissions is to lock the door." In the 2003 book she co-wrote with her daughter, The Two-Income Trap , she took special aim at Biden's efforts to make it harder for Americans to declare bankruptcy and framed it as an issue that disproportionally effects women:
This year, more women will file bankruptcy papers than will receive college diplomas. More women with children will search for a bankruptcy lawyer than will seek subsidized day care. And in a statistic with special significance for Senator Biden, more women will be victimized by predatory lenders than will seek protection from an abusive husband or boyfriend... The point is simply that family economics should not be left to giant corporations and paid lobbyists, and senators like Joe Biden should not be allowed to sell out women in the morning and be heralded as their friend in the evening. Middle-class women need help, and right now no one is putting their economic interests first.
Two years after Warren wrote that, BAPCPA overwhelmingly passed with Biden's support—while bankruptcy reform had been dead on arrival just a few years earlier, 18 Senate Democrats chose to side with all 55 Republicans and the lone independent to vote in favor of the bill. Then president George W. Bush promptly signed it into law, and 14 years later BAPCPA is still making it more costly and cumbersome to declare bankruptcy. With the U.S. likely heading for another recession and credit card debt at a record $870 billion , millions more Americans could end up struggling with mountains of debt than they would otherwise had Biden not fought so hard to strip them of bankruptcy protection.
BIDEN WAS SELECTED BY BANKSTER-OWNED OBAMA BECAUSE OF HIS LONG HISTORY OF SERVING THE BANKSTERS! Biden backed brutal bankruptcy bill in 2005 By Chris Talgo
In 1999, then- Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) declared , “I’m not the senator from MBNA.” Apparently, Biden felt it was necessary to clarify that he did not exclusively represent credit card giant MBNA because his constituents were thoroughly confused, based on his track record of being a shill for credit card companies located in the First State.
Then, six years later, Biden inserted his foot directly into his mouth (again) when he championed the notorious (and ill-named) Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA). A more appropriate name could have been the Act to Protect Credit Card Companies and Shaft Students and Workers.
In short, BAPCPA was a terrible bill that favored credit card companies, big banks, and millionaires over working-class borrowers. It also is solely responsible for the fact that student loan debt is totally impossible to dismiss -- even after one has declared bankruptcy.
Wait a minute, I thought Joe Biden was the consummate defender and advocate of the working class and oppressed. Far from it. In reality, Biden’s political career of more than four decades was predicated upon protecting the interests of credit card companies.
And he and his son, Hunter, were compensated handsomely for doing so. According to a 2019 GQ article titled “How Biden Helped Strip Bankruptcy Protection From Millions Just Before a Recession” -- “one of the biggest credit card companies in Delaware, MBNA, hired Joe Biden's son Hunter in 1996. Even after Hunter became a federal lobbyist in 2001, he stayed on at MBNA as a consultant at a fee of $100,000 per year, meaning he was pulling in a six-figure salary at the same time his father was pushing for the industry's top priorities.” Can you say, quid pro quo, Joe?
As if the backroom deals and “you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours” shenanigans that Biden blatantly engaged in before, during, and after BAPCPA was passed were not bad enough, the bill wrought untold damage among the very people Biden constantly claims to protect.
According to Adam J. Levitin , professor of law at Georgetown University, BAPCPA “was perhaps the most anti-middle class piece of legislation in the past century.” And, as Levitin writes, “Biden used his clout to push for the law’s passage and to defeat amendments to shield servicemembers, women, and children from its harsh treatment. When votes were taken, ‘Middle-Class Joe’ was no friend to the middle class.” It sure seems that Biden abandoned his Lunchbox Joe persona when it came to voting in favor of BAPCPA, not to mention that he strongly supported amendments that made the bill even more hostile to the middle class!
And adding insult to injury, Biden also voted against several amendments that were specifically meant to help several “underprivileged” groups. As Levitin writes, “He voted against three amendments to ease bankruptcy requirements for consumers whose financial troubles stem from medical expenses. He voted against an amendment that would have helped seniors keep their homes . He voted against exempting servicemembers and widows of servicemembers killed in action from the law’s eligibility restrictions. He voted against an amendment to exempt women whose financial troubles stemmed from deadbeat husbands’ failure to pay child support or alimony . And Biden even voted against an amendment that would have ensured that children of debtors could still be given birthday and Christmas presents . Biden also voted against allowing debtors to pay their union dues during bankruptcy , potentially imperiling their employment and ability to achieve financial rehabilitation.” Could Biden’s voting record on this bill get any worse? Actually, yes.
Not only did Biden strongly oppose BAPCPA amendments aimed to
help “disadvantaged” groups, he voted
for two giant loopholes that effectively
allowed millionaires to shield their
assets from collectors after they filed
for bankruptcy. What a joke, Joe.
As a senator, Biden vigorously voted for several similar bills. In short, based on his voting record, Joe Biden is not (and never was) a champion of disadvantaged Americans, unless you consider multi-billion-dollar credit card corporations and millionaires “disadvantaged.”
Chris Talgo ( ctalgo@heartland.org ) is an editor at The Heartland Institute.
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