by ZeroHedge Staff at ZeroHedge
Consider the source…
Jason Furman is an American economist and professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
On June 10, 2013, Furman was named by President Barack Obama as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers.
Ok so having explained the “who”, here is the “what”…
Pouring roughly half trillion dollars of gasoline on the inflationary fire that is already burning is reckless. Doing it while going well beyond one campaign promise ($10K of student loan relief) and breaking another (all proposals paid for) is even worse.
— Jason Furman (@jasonfurman) August 24, 2022
Furman’s thread continues…
The White House fact sheet has sympathetic examples about a construction worker making $38K and a married nurse making $77,000 a year.
But then why design a policy that would provide up to $40,000 to a married couple making $249,000? Why include law and business school students?
BTW, those examples also contradict the baseline some have concocted to claim that this won’t raise inflation. The claim it won’t raise inflation is based on the construction worker going from permanently paying $0 interest to paying $31 a month at an annual cost of $372.
You can’t use one baseline (interest payments suspended) to argue this will constrain demand & then a different baseline (interest payments restored) to describe the benefits. That is incoherent, inconsistent & indefensible cherry picking–I hope the White House doesn’t do it.
Also need to be careful with all of the distributional numbers because…
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