Treasury Secretary’s Idea of `Transitory’ Proves Transitory

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who believes the financial reserves of the nation of Afghanistan belong to her Office of Foreign Assets Control instead, also has a very flexible view of her duty to inform the United States about the threat of rising inflation. In May, Yellen joined Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell in a number of statements assuring the Congress and the American people that the galloping inflation was “transitory” and would have subsided by the end of this year. She repeated that for a couple of months; but on CNN’s “State of the Union” program on Oct. 24, Yellen said that she expects high inflation to “ease by the middle to end of next year,” referring to 2022. And she elaborated in a way that made the “easing” point seem a good deal more vague than that: “The COVID shock to the economy has caused disruptions that we’ll be working through over the next year. And, of course, Americans have not seen inflation like we have experienced recently, in a long time. As we get back to normal, expect that to end.”