(Marketwatch) President Donald Trump recently said that if the Federal Reserve were to follow his suggestion and cut its benchmark rate by a full percentage point, the U.S. economy would take off “like a rocket ship.”
Billionaire investor Sam Zell agrees... with a big caveat.
‘I think he’s right. If we reduced interest rates by 100 basis points, I think the economy would soar and so would inflation and so would the dollar fall accordingly.’
Zell, talking at the SALT conference in Las Vegas, said such a move would ultimately be “a disaster” for the economy. ‘I don’t think that there’s any justification for any kind of a significant increase,” he said, according to CNBC.
Separately, Zell said Trump is doing the right thing by taking on China on the trade front, and he also praised the job he’s done so far in growing the economy.
“I’m having a tough time correlating the negative headlines on the business environment and the reality of what we see,” Zell said. “If the economy is going to continue to prosper the way it is now, I don’t think there’s any doubt that President Trump is going to get re-elected.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up triple-digits at last check, climbing back from steep losses accumulated over the past two sessions.
