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Goldman Sachs senior chairman shares stark prediction for US economy: 'Very, very high risk' of recession
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Goldman Sachs senior chairman shares stark prediction for US economy: 'Very, very high risk' of recession

Goldman Sachs senior chairman Lloyd Blankfein warned Sunday the American economy is at risk of entering a recession.

What did Blankfein say?

Speaking on CBS News' "Face the Nation," Blankfein, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, warned that the U.S. is racing toward an economic recession.

"We're certainly heading — it's certainly a very, very high risk factor," he said when asked whether a recession is coming.

Blankfein explained the Federal Reserve has "powerful tools" at its disposal to counteract the impacts of the ongoing inflation crisis, but he noted that "it's hard to finely tune them and it's hard to see the effects of them quickly enough to alter it." Therefore, Blankfein said Americans should be prepared for an economic downturn.

"I think it's definitely a risk," he said of inflation. "If I were running a big company, I would be very prepared for it. If I was a consumer, I'd be prepared for it. But it's not baked in the cake."

Goldman Sachs' Lloyd Blankfein on inflation, the Fed and supply chain issueswww.youtube.com

Earlier in the interview, Blankfein said he believes the inflation crisis was caused by "too much growth, too much stimulus" in the wake of the COVID lockdowns and ensuing stimulus bills, which overwhelmed the world economy with liquidity and demand once the global markets reopened.

Blankfein also agreed with analysis from the Federal Reserve of San Francisco, which concluded the inflation crisis has been caused in part by President Joe Biden's COVID stimulus bill.

That analysis stated:

Since the first half of 2021, U.S. inflation has increasingly outpaced inflation in other developed countries. Estimates suggest that fiscal support measures designed to counteract the severity of the pandemic’s economic effect may have contributed to this divergence by raising inflation about 3 percentage points by the end of 2021.

Bloomberg News reported that Blankfein's comments were made on the same day that Goldman Sachs slashed its U.S. growth forecasts to account for the growing economic problems.

"Goldman’s economic team, led by Jan Hatzius, now expects U.S. gross domestic product to expand 2.4% this year, down from 2.6%. It reduced its 2023 estimate to 1.6% from 2.2%," Bloomberg reported.

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