Summers: Jobs Numbers Show ‘We’re Not in a Controlled Place’ on Inflation and We Must Start ‘Managing for Some Slowdown’

During an interview aired on Friday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “Wall Street Week,” Harvard Professor, economist, Director of the National Economic Council under President Barack Obama, and Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton Larry Summers said that “we’re not in a controlled place with respect to inflation” and there wasn’t anything in the September jobs report that suggests we are getting to a controlled place. Summers also stated that we need to start “managing for some slowdown,” as soon as we can.

Summers stated, “I think these numbers were about what we expected, and the sensible judgment was that we’ve got an inflation problem. Core inflation figures look artificially good. They’re better than median inflation. And yet, core inflation ran at a 7% rate last month, and that was more than for the quarter and the quarter was more than for the half-year and the half-year was more than for the whole year. So, we’re not in a controlled place with respect to inflation. And there wasn’t really anything in this report to suggest that we were coming into a controlled place. … I think we are headed for a collision of some kind or other, and we’ve just got to manage that collision carefully, and I think the sooner we start managing for some slowdown, the better we’re going to do.”

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