Comedian and political commentator Jon Stewart and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers got into a heated exchange about the state of the economy during an episode of Stewart’s eponymous show, “The Dilemma With Jon Stewart.” 

On Friday, Summers argued that the U.S. government’s stimulus measures have resulted in inflation, increasing costs and wages. 

“What occurred to us is we had huge stimulus and an economy that could only create so a lot. So we had a large level of demand, and these large levels of demand kept pushing up costs and pushing up wages,” he explained. “But in the end, it was, you place also a lot water in the bathtub, you place also a lot demand into the economy, and you get higher and increasing costs.”

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In discussing wages and employment, Summers stated, “There are particular sicknesses you can have exactly where there is a drug, and it has side effects, and everyone hates the side effects, and no medical doctor desires their patient to endure the side effects. But if you never address the sickness, you can have a larger dilemma down the road.” 

Stewart, on the other hand, fired back, saying, “The stock market place assets have gone up 150%. CEO spend has gone up 1,500%. Workers wages have not gone up at all. I consider you are misdiagnosing the sickness.”

“The most critical dilemma in the U.S. economy has been the cleavages in between these like you and me, who are extremely fortunate. That is why we want a method and strengthening financial labor energy. Is it an situation that somebody whose manage is more than setting interest prices and printing revenue can do a lot about?” Summers asked in response. 

Study Also: Larry Summers Says Soft Landing ‘Looks Far more Possible’: Unemployment Vs. Inflation

Speaking later about financial recovery, Stewart stated, “This pandemic was the initial time the government, in my opinion, did the factor that they are supposed to do in a crisis. When you appear at the stimulus payments that went out, you know, 70% of it was becoming applied for rent and meals.”

“And if you appear at the recovery in the pandemic versus the recovery from 2008, when you stimulated the economy at the demand level, jobs had plunged in the pandemic and then they shot back up. The recovery in 2009 was painstaking, but the stock market place did terrific. So our fiscal policy and our monetary policy has constantly been on the side of corporate easing,” he added. 

“If you speak to African American voters, if you speak to Hispanic voters, speak to voters who never have college degrees, they regard the country’s largest dilemma as possessing to do with inflation,” Summers retorted. “So when you could see this as possessing been tremendously prosperous, our fellow Americans who never reside as comfortably as you and I do have a lot of concerns.”

Touching on the subject of corporate profit, Stewart told the former Treasury Secretary, “But what you are not addressing is not all of inflation was stimulus. The tools that we have, even though, are essentially saying to somebody, everyone’s paying additional for gas and groceries, and that is truly challenging. So here’s what we’re going to do: We’re going to throw ten million of them out of operate so that we all never have to share that burden. Why are not we attacking corporate profit in any way? Since that is been estimated to be 30% of inflation, 40% of inflation?”

Summers responded by saying that he did not consider that “it really is a tenable view that all of a sudden corporations became greedy.”

At that point, Stewart cut Summers off, pointing out that there had been recordings and reports where corporate executives had spoken highly of their increased earnings throughout earnings calls. 

The former Treasury Secretary had earlier stated that the Federal Reserve should not be spooked by the current banking crisis into easing its campaign to include inflation.

“It would be extremely unfortunate if, out of solicitude for the banking program, the Fed have been to slow down its price of interest-price raise beyond what was acceptable offered the credit contraction,” Summers stated throughout an interview with Bloomberg. 

Study Subsequent: Larry Summers Says It Would Be ‘Catastrophic’ For US To Default On Debt: ‘God, I Want We Could Move Previous This’

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