Former Treasury Secretary Challenges Biden’s Claim Against Oil Companies

On July 13, 2021, former Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, was contacted by the White House amid inflation fears. Though sometimes a critic of President Joe Biden’s economic policy, the White House hosted the meeting with Summers and two of the president’s top economic aides.

FT.com reported – As Biden and Democrats in Congress plowed ahead with their plan to pass a $1.9tn fiscal stimulus bill the first week of February, they faced an unwelcome roadblock from within their own political sphere.

Mr. Summers warned that Biden’s plan was excessive and that it might trigger “inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation, with consequences for the value of the dollar and financial stability”.

Summers’ skepticism for the spending bill came out in his Washington Post op-ed, which clashed with the left-leaning economists supporting Biden’s argument that the US needed to “go big” with massive government support to tackle the still-raging pandemic.

During an interview aired on last Friday’s edition of Bloomberg’s “Wall Street Week,” Mr. Summers, who is also an economist, Harvard Professor, and former Director of the National Economic Council under President Barack Obama responded to one of President Joe Biden’s tweets.

Oil prices are decreasing, gas prices should too.

Last time oil was $96 a barrel, gas was $3.62 a gallon. Now it’s $4.31.

Oil and gas companies shouldn’t pad their profits at the expense of hardworking Americans. pic.twitter.com/uLNGleWBly

— President Biden (@POTUS) March 16, 2022

In it, the person tweeting for the aging president tries to deflect the national blame of President Biden for driving up energy costs, especially the cost per gallon of gasoline.

The administration tries to shift the blame to the oil and gas companies, accusing them of padding their profits by keeping gas prices high.

In the interview, Summer refutes Biden’s claim by stating, “there’s nothing that would support that in the president’s tweet, and I haven’t seen any analysis coming out of the administration, or anyplace else, that provided serious support for that.”

Summers said, “I wish the president got more help from his economic advisers. Those spreads between gasoline prices and refined prices vary substantially on a range of factors. There [are] lags between the price of oil and the price of gasoline. When natural gas is in short supply, when diesel is in desperately short supply, it affects the mix of products that refiners provide and ways to change that spread.

Maybe there is a basis for thinking that profits are being padded, but there’s nothing that would support that in the president’s tweet, and I haven’t seen any analysis coming out of the administration, or anyplace else, that provided serious support for that.” he added.

“Look, at a time when we have a war to fight, at a time when energy security is a central issue for us, at a time when, over time, we’re going to have to cooperate with our energy companies on the necessary transition away from fossil fuels, I think we should be very careful about accusing them of bad behavior unless we’ve got clear evidence,” Summers continued.

“Now, the administrator may have clear evidence, and if so, I’ll be the first to admit that and to want to look and evaluate the evidence. But this kind of comparison that was contained in the president’s tweet, I’m afraid does not represent that kind of clear evidence.”

So, once again Biden’s team was wrong yet spent political capital pushing their agenda anyway.

As the result, our nation finds itself in mess after just 15 months of Joe Biden being in office.

By: Eric Thompson, editor of Eric Thompson Show.