On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Steve Rattner, who served as counselor to the Treasury Secretary in the Obama administration, stated that the government “went too far in trying to mute the effects of the pandemic, too much stimulus” in addition to stimulative Fed policy, “and now we’re paying the price.”
Rattner said, “We have an economy that, on many levels, is performing exceptionally well. We went through a pandemic. We came out of it. We’ve had this extraordinarily quick recovery, thanks, in large part, to government efforts, government stimulus, and other things that we had to do, cutting interest rates to zero, but now — but we overshot the mark, in effect. We kind of went too far in trying to mute the effects of the pandemic, too much stimulus…too much low interest rates for too long by the Fed, too much buying of bonds by the Fed, and now we’re paying the price. And the problem is, historically, consumers have voted in elections very much on the basis of inflation as much as they have on all the other very good aspects of this economy that you just recited, and all — as you know, all the public opinion polls, inflation has been at or near the top in terms of people’s concerns. And so, obviously, the Biden administration is trying to present all the good news that you just went through very clearly, but the question is going to be whether this inflation news overcomes that.”
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