Douglas Holtz-Eakin: I Am Cautious, We’re Still Going to Have to Fight Inflation in 2024

EXCERPT:

HOLTZ-EAKIN: “There's a lot in the real economy, I think, to be cautious about. If you look at the big third quarter GDP numbers, inside that it was all driven by households and government spending. I'm a little concerned about households, we're seeing credit card delinquencies rise, we're seeing savings rate plunge by 2 percentage points in the second half of this year. How much can they carry the economy? I don't know. Business fixed investment, which I'll remind you led every post-war downturn except the pandemic. So that's the thing to look at, essentially flat in the third quarter, no sign of the big pickup in the fourth quarter. So I'm -- I'm cautious about the outlook in the first half of 2024. We're still going to have to fight through inflation, there's not the underlying balance in the economy that you'd like to see.”