Sec Yellen: Don’t think US is going to have a recession

Speaking at a New York event, US Treasury Sec. Janet Yellen explained that she does not think the US is going to have a recession.

Earlier, this week, Sec Janet Yellen told Congress that the US is facing “unacceptable levels of inflation” on Tuesday as the treasury secretary defended herself from criticism of her previous comments that rising prices were “transitory”.

In response to a question about how she had initially framed inflation, Yellen said: “When I said that inflation would be transitory, what I was not anticipating was a scenario in which we would end up contending with multiple variants of Covid-19 that would be scrambling our economy and global supply chains.

Key comments

Expects growth to slow down, but consumer spending is very strong, and investment spending is solid.

Believes there is a path through this that entails a soft landing.

It’s unlikely that gasoline prices will fall anytime soon.

Inflation clearly a major problem.

Would not change policies if she could go back in time.

Amazing how pessimistic households are given job gains.