‘We’re In A Recession’: Steve Forbes Blasts Central Bank For ‘Making People Poorer’

By Harold Hutchison for Daily Caller News Foundation

Former Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes, who is editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine, blasted the Federal Reserve’s efforts to address inflation during a Monday morning appearance on Fox Business Network.

“Instead of focusing on stabilizing the dollar, the Federal Reserve is drastically raising interest rates, far more than any other country in the world,” Forbes told host Stuart Varney. “Other countries are going to be printing a lot of money to help businesses and consumers to get through this hard winter so that’s going to be a pressure on upward prices. So, we’re in a recession, I don’t care what they define it as.”

The Federal Reserve increased interest rates multiple times, starting in March, with the latest interest rate hike coming in July. GDP contracted in the first and second quarters this year, with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell saying “some pain” for households was an acceptable price to control inflation in an Aug. 26 speech.

“Maybe we’ll get a little blip upward in the third quarter, but we are in a downturn, and the Fed wants a downturn because the only way it knows how to fight inflation, is by making people poorer,” Forbes continued.

The Consumer Price Index climbed by 8.3% in August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Increases of 8.6% in May, 9.1% in June and 8.5% in July preceded August’s figures.

Forbes predicted that Biden’s efforts to dismiss inflation would haunt him in the future.

“The president overlooked the fact that even though he says it only inched up, commentators, observers thought it was going to go down slightly because of the big decline in gasoline,” Forbes said. “So it was a disappointing report. So, this happy talk is going to hit him back hard, and he’s doing all he can to make it impossible to recover from the inflation that comes from disrupting supply chains.”

“We’re all going to pay the price for it,” Forbes added later.

Link to the original article on the Daily Caller website.