In the middle of a volatile week for markets led by the major tech stocks, Wharton professor Jeremy Siegel told the assembled wealth managers at the Forbes/SHOOK Top Advisor Summit in Las Vegas that the current economic picture is unsustainable and projected 20% to 25% inflation over the next few years, positing that it could come with successive years of 5% to 7% annual inflation.
Quoting Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize winning economist, he expects inflation to appear 12 to 24 months following the uptick in money supply from the pandemic response. He sees this inflation being a product of the quantitative easing being employed by the Federal Reserve.
“Quantitative easing is important but if that quantitative easing gets in the money, watch out,” Siegel told the assembled crowd at the Encore at Wynn Las Vegas hotel. “I never predicted inflation from the quantitative easing of [Former Federal Reserve Chair] Ben Bernanke, but I am predicting inflation from the quantitative easing that Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve is doing now.”