Kudrow under the hood look at jobs report

[Belsnickel]

Anyone know who Larry Summers is? He's an economist and former Treasury secretary that predicted inflation under Biden's policies. While I am someone who often decries the way the economy is tied to presidents in a way they don't necessarily deserve, good or bad, we can't deny that he was right. Well, he's in the prediction market again, and he's here to tell you that Trump's policies would exacerbate inflation, not relieve it.

Quote:Treasury secretary Larry Summers in warning that President Joe Biden and the Federal Reserve Board risked igniting inflation by overstimulating the economy in 2021. Soaring prices over the next few years proved Summers correct. Now Summers sees the risk of another price shock in the economic plans of former president Donald Trump.

“There has never been a presidential platform so self-evidently inflationary as the one put forward by President Trump,” Summers says in an interview this week. “I have little doubt that with the Trump program, we will see a substantial acceleration in inflation, unless somehow we get a major recession first.”

Summers is far from alone in raising that alarm. Trump’s greatest asset in the 2024 campaign may be the widespread belief among voters that the cost of living was more affordable when he was president and would be so again if he’s re-elected to a second term.

But a growing number of economists and policy analysts are warning that Trump’s second-term agenda of sweeping tariffs, mass deportation of undocumented migrants, and enormous tax cuts would accelerate, rather than alleviate, inflation.

In an upcoming analysis, Mark Zandi, the chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, forecasts that compared with current policies, Trump’s economic plans would increase the inflation rate and force the Federal Reserve Board to raise interest rates higher than they would be otherwise.

“If he got what he wanted,” Zandi says, “you add it all up, and it feels highly inflationary to me.”

Elections are about the future we want to build. From the looks of it, if the economy is your top priority, Trump's policies will do further harm. Not a very bright future.