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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It’s not surprising U.S. President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus emergency plan touched off concerns that a gusher of federal spending on the possible eve of a vaccine-fueled economic take-off might lead to inflation.
FILE PHOTO: Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and Harvard University s Lawrence Summers delivers remarks at the National Association for Business Economics Policy Conference in Arlington, Virginia February 24, 2014. REUTERS/Gary Cameron/File Photo
What is surprising is who is doing the fretting: Not debt-hawk Republicans but former Treasury secretary, Democratic stalwart and Harvard University professor Lawrence Summers, who in a recent Washington Post essay said the Biden plan could “set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation . Stimulus measures of the magnitude contemplated are steps into the unknown.”
In his inaugural address, President Biden suggested, “Politics need not be a raging fire destroying everything in its path. We must end this uncivil war.”