Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen gave her most direct admission yet that she made an incorrect call last year in predicting that elevated inflation wouldn’t pose a continuing problem.
“I was wrong about the path inflation would take,” Yellen said in an interview that aired Tuesday on CNN. “There have been unanticipated and large shocks to the economy that have boosted energy and food prices and supply bottlenecks that have affected our economy badly that at the time I didn’t fully understand.”
New variants of COVID-19, lockdowns in China and Russia’s war on Ukraine have all imposed shocks on the economy, the Treasury chief said after attending a meeting at the White House with President Joe Biden and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to address inflation.
