Steve Forbes Criticizes Fed for ‘Making People Poorer,’ Insists America Is in Recession

Steve Forbes, chairman and editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine, told Fox Business Network that President Joe Biden will get blowback for his “happy talk” on inflation, insisted America in a recession even if the downturn isn’t yet official, and blasted the Federal Reserve for hiking interest rates too aggressively and “making people poorer.”

Program host Stuart Varney kicked off the segment by expressing reservation about Biden’s remarks in an interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes” in which the president said that the monthly inflation rate was so low as to be basically negligible and that price pressure would continue to ease going forward.

Varney said he disagreed and predicted a “very difficult inflationary winter,” before asking Forbes to weigh in.

Forbes took a sympathetic view on that forecast, saying that “we’re going to have a hard winter and the Europeans are going to have it even worse.”

Biden’s ‘Happy Talk’ on Inflation

Further addressing Biden’s remarks, Forbes said the president “overlooked” that inflation rising at 0.1 percent month-over-month pace in August—which Biden characterized as having inched up “hardly at all”—was higher than analysts expected and so was “disappointing” to markets.

“This happy talk is going to hit him back hard,” Forbes said of Biden, adding that the president is “doing all he can to make it impossible to recover from the inflation that comes from disrupting supply chains” with his anti-fossil fuel policies that will put energy prices up.

Forbes then predicted that the Federal Reserve would continue to hike interest rates and push the country deeper into a recession.

“That’s the only way they know how to get down prices—it’s by depressing the economy,” he said. “Not the right way to do it and we’re all going to pay the price.”

‘Making People Poorer’

The Fed will raise its benchmark interest rate by

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