{"id":7445,"date":"2006-05-18T11:13:17","date_gmt":"2006-05-18T15:13:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7445"},"modified":"2006-05-18T11:13:17","modified_gmt":"2006-05-18T15:13:17","slug":"barney-franks-questions-for-john-snow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/barney-franks-questions-for-john-snow\/","title":{"rendered":"Barney Frank’s questions for John Snow"},"content":{"rendered":"

[tag]Treasury[\/tag] Secretary [tag]John Snow[\/tag] was having a delightful time testifying on the Hill yesterday. He took particular pleasure in telling lawmakers, “Average hourly earnings are picking up. We learned from this month’s jobs report that average hourly earnings have risen 3.8% over the past 12 months — their largest increase in nearly five years.”<\/p>\n

Rep. [tag]Barney Frank[\/tag] (D-Mass.), however, had a few follow-up questions<\/a>. At that point, Snow was no longer having a good time.<\/p>\n

“Mr. Secretary,” Frank said, “I agree with much of your statement, but I confess to some trouble with your citation of the rise in hourly wages. What’s the CPI increase over the past 12 months? Do you know?” Replied Snow: “Well, about 5, I think, 5.1.”<\/p>\n

To which Frank said: “OK, because you’ve got hourly earnings going up 3.8%, and I believe\u2026that’s not adjusted for inflation. So my understanding is that even in the past 12 months, which are your best<\/em> 12 months, hourly wages have barely kept up with inflation…. But you would acknowledge that 3.8% increase in [tag]wages[\/tag] you’re talking about is nominal, not adjusted for [tag]inflation[\/tag], correct?<\/p>\n

Snow, who has a Ph.D. in economics, was a bit flummoxed at first. “I’ll have to go back, Congressman, and check these numbers,” he said.<\/p>\n

“That’s not a trick question,” Frank insisted.<\/p>\n

“I know it’s not,” replied the Treasury secretary. He then confirmed that the 3.8% was nominal, that is unadjusted for inflation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Frank had the audacity to point out that during the ongoing “recovery,” wages have “dropped…compared to inflation.” And as the WSJ pointed out<\/a>, Frank’s observation coincided with a report from the Economic Policy Institute showing that inflation-adjusted wages in April returned to November 2001 levels.<\/p>\n

Snow receives a lot of criticism for his inability to sell Bush’s economic agenda, but at a certain level, it’s unwarranted. Some facts just can’t be spun, especially by a powerless Treasury Secretary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[tag]Treasury[\/tag] Secretary [tag]John Snow[\/tag] was having a delightful time testifying on the Hill yesterday. He took particular pleasure in telling lawmakers, “Average hourly earnings are picking up. We learned from this month’s jobs report that average hourly earnings have risen 3.8% over the past 12 months — their largest increase in nearly five years.” Rep. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7445\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}