Reuters headlines from Treasury Secretary Yellen
- hopefully pandemic will not completely stifle economic activity
- US stimulus at start of pandemic helped fuel very strong recovery
- stimulus did contribute somewhat to inflation, but pandemic added factors
- unclear why labor force participation in the US has declined. Best guess is concerned about virus
- labor shortage is starting to put upward pressure on wages
- believes return to normal economy would help alleviate pressures
- Biden administration does everything we can to coordinate private-sector efforts to mitigate supply chain problems
- we should be realistically about what can be accomplished by government to reduce inflation
- Biden working with private sector, but don't want to overpromise
- working with semiconductor manufacturers, but takes a long time to ramp up production
- tariffs do contribute to higher prices
- Some Trump era tariffs create problems without having any real strategic justification
- Lowering tariffs through exclusion process could be helpful but not a game changer
- up to Federal Reserve to decide when to raise interest rates
- does not want to have wage price spiral develop in which inflation comes chronic
- it is the Fed's job to ensure we don't have wage price spiral in the 1970s
A look at the US stock market in premarket trading shows the
- Dow industrial average is now up only 120 points,
- the S&P is near flat and
- the NASDAQ is down -46 points
Get that grin off your face TS Yellen... ; )
