By Carolina Mandl
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Billionaire investor Ken Griffin, the founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities, said on Tuesday that the Federal Reserve needs more consistency in communication to tame inflation and that the set-up for a recession is unfolding.
“If I could tell the (Fed) chairman one thing, I’d tell him to say less. I’d just write a message: We’re going to put the inflation genie back in the bottle,” Griffin said in a televised interview with Bloomberg .
Earlier on Tuesday, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said the Fed will likely have to raise rates more than expected to keep inflation under control. Previously, some market participants have sometimes read the speeches of Fed officials as less aggressive.
“I do believe reporting consistency is so important because part of the way the Fed gets the job done is the perception of the American public that they can get the job done,” Griffin said. He believes the Fed will raise interest rates to around 5.5% to curb inflation.
Still, the billionaire said the set-up for a recession is unfolding as the “pandemic orgy” of spending will come to an end by the end of this year or next.
Griffin expressed some concerns about the impact of a long debt ceiling debate until a final deal is made, but said an agreement will be reached. “I think it will be the volatility of the market that will lead to that compromise.”
He said Citadel is currently negotiating an enterprise-wide license to use the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT to help its developers write better code, translate software between languages and analyze information.
(Reporting by Carolina Mandl, in New York; editing by Lincoln Feast)
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