Jon Stewart Rips Larry Summers More than Take On Economy: ‘I Consider You are Misdiagnosing The Sickness’

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 Challenge With Jon Stewart.” 

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

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

In discussing wages and employment, Summers mentioned, “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 physician desires their patient to endure the side effects. But if you do not address the sickness, you can have a larger dilemma down the road.” 

Stewart, even so, fired back, saying, “The stock marketplace assets have gone up 150%. CEO spend has gone up 1,500%. Workers wages have not gone up at all. I believe you are misdiagnosing the sickness.”

“The most really serious dilemma in the U.S. economy has been the cleavages involving these like you and me, who are extremely fortunate. That is why we will need a tactic and strengthening financial labor energy. Is it an problem that somebody whose manage is more than setting interest prices and printing revenue can do a great deal about?” Summers asked in response. 

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Speaking later about financial recovery, Stewart mentioned, “This pandemic was the very first time the government, in my opinion, did the issue 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 marketplace did good. So our fiscal policy and our monetary policy has normally 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 do not have college degrees, they regard the country’s greatest dilemma as obtaining to do with inflation,” Summers retorted. “So when you may well see this as obtaining been tremendously prosperous, our fellow Americans who do not 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, although, are essentially saying to somebody, everyone’s paying extra for gas and groceries, and that is definitely difficult. 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 do not 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 believe that “it 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 through earnings calls. 

The former Treasury Secretary had earlier mentioned 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 method, the Fed had been to slow down its price of interest-price enhance beyond what was proper offered the credit contraction,” Summers mentioned through an interview with Bloomberg. 

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