Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she regrets describing inflation in 2021 as “transitory,” the term several Federal Reserve and Biden administration officials used to describe the pandemic-induced price surges they initially thought would be temporary.
“I regret saying it was transitory. It has come down. But I think transitory means a few weeks or months to most people,” Yellen said during an interview with FOX Business Network’s Edward Lawrence on Monday.
Treasury spokesman Christopher Hayden said in an email to The Hill that this was not the first time Yellen expressed regret for calling inflation “transitory,” which she previously said during an interview with WBUR in January.
Headline inflation fell to 3.2 percent year-over-year in February from its 9.1 percent peak in June 2022, a significant improvement but still higher than the Fed’s mandate to keep price increases to 2 percent annually.
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