often asked about is, what does he mean by inflation being transitory? and he s had to explain it multiple times. one of the interesting things he said recently was transitory doesn t mean that prices aren t going up and don t stay up. at the question is, over what period of time? and i think that s what we re really talking about. so people can expect to pay more and prices not necessarily come down but the forces behind that, are they something that are temporary, or do those forces continue to drive up prices on a long term basis? and because most economists think that a lot of this is happening as a result of the pandemic recovery and that mismatch between supply and demand, and the problems it s causing in terms of supply chain bottlenecks, they anticipate that is the all starts to dissipate next year, so will some of the upward price pressure. so that is why you have this whole conversation about, what does temporary mean? in the meantime, there s this thing about
collapsing, actually, but no one could take advantage of it. now the economy is back open. we re seeing prices go higher. to catherine s point, though, president biden doesn t have the ability to completely lower prices and that s not something that we should expect to happen overnight. but if this is covid. when will we come out of this? i wish i knew the answer. it does look like obviously lots of supply chain bottlenecks are persisting longer than anybody anticipated, the fed anticipated, other economists anticipated and today, as was the case a year ago, the pandemic is in control of the global economy so unless we get vaccination rates up, not just in the u.s. but in poorer countries that don t have sufficient access to vaccination supply, i think you re still going to see these disruptions around the world. president biden also talked about that just now. i mean, he talked about the supply chain and trying to do things on that front as well, including ports. yes. so,
make of what he said?- across all of that. what did you make of what he said? i think the democrats make of what he said? i think the democrats have make of what he said? i think the democrats have grown make of what he said? i think the. democrats have grown increasingly nervous in recent weeks. the higher inflation levels were causing huge problems, certainly if you look at the congressional elections in a year s time, and you have seen the response to that, speaking more forcefully in recent days about what exactly has been done to help and support the economy since president biden took office. so to go back to the speech, he started off talking about higher costs, inflation, but also how far the us has come since the pandemic, and tried to put it in context relative to prices we have seen before, so actions that his administration has taken to address supply chain bottlenecks, then he talked about the actions they were taking today, and he framed it in terms of high gas price
overall the economy is in a very good place. we ve seen a big increase in jobs. unemployment is down much more quickly than people anticipated, but we do have challenges with cost pressure increases primarily due to the supply chain bottlenecks, and the president is doing everything he can to relieve those bottlenecks including now releasing petroleum from the strategic reserve, something that i encouraged the president to do along with others. so i m pleased to see this action, but there s no one thing, hally, that we can do when it comes to the price increases because of the supply chain issues. but i do think this is an important part of the next policy we have. before i let you go, obviously, listen, this is a holiday week. it is thanksgiving week. it is slow at the building behind me here, at the capitol. but when you get back, when the senate specifically gets back there s an absolute packed calendar. i don t have to tell you.
the pandemic. supply chain bottlenecks, disruption caused by spikes in covid-19, elevated prices, they re all taking a bite out of our family budgets. perhaps no entity plays a more important role in navigating these than the federal reserve because it s the fed s job to balance two key goals. the first is to achieve maximum employment, to get as many americans working as possible. the second is to keep inflation low and stable. to piece these goals, is going to require patience, skill and independence. that s why today i m nominating jerome powell for a second term as chair of the federal reserve, and i m nominating lael brainard to take the position as vice chair of the federal reserve. when our country was hemorrhaging jobs last year and there was panic our financial