Program:  Kennedy
Date:  3/10/2022
Station:  Fox Business News
Time:  7:00PM

DAVID ASMAN: So conflict with Russia. Gas lines down the block and grocery prices soaring beyond control, if you’re feeling like you’re in a time warp, you’re not alone. We’ve been here before. An annual inflation jumped to seven point nine percent in February. This is the highest rate since 1982. Today, former Trump economic adviser Kevin Hassett warned of the dire state of the U.S. economy. Watch

KEVIN HASSETT: What we’re doing is we’re looking at inflation that’s out of control at a time when the economy is sort of headed towards a recession and the Fed hasn’t even started tightening yet, and we’ve got this runaway inflation and a weakening economy.

ASMAN: So here with me now in the studio is Fox News contributor and Kingsview Wealth Management, Chief Investment Officer. He’s from Chicago, but he flew to New York just for the show. Thank you for that.

SCOTT MARTIN: My own accord and not even having a little bit of skin here today.

ASMAN: Nice to see you in person, in person. All right. Let’s pick up off of what Hassett was saying. The problem is to deal with this inflation. The Fed is going to have to tight raise interest rates, but it’s reluctant, more reluctant now to do it than it was before the Russian invasion. And if it’s tightening at all during a slowdown, we got recession, don’t we?

MARTIN: They had their chance, David, when the economy was actually growing kind of on its own. And you’re right now it’s slowing on its own. I think we’re going to see one or two rate hikes and that’s going to be it. And by then, to your point, I mean, mix in the oil price issue and we’re not even at summer driving season yet. Just getting into spring break here, as I know, as my kids remind me every day that that’s like a month away. So imagine that with the oil prices mixed in to the Fed hiking interest rates. Recessions on the doorstep.

ASMAN: If you’re not careful, the bottom line the only way to stop the inflation and kind of inflation that we’re clearly heading towards. Kevin Hassett, by the way, thinks it’s already double digit because you look at the wholesale prices, that’s 10 percent down by now and that’s going to be heading towards the retail sector soon. And that means that consumers are going to be paying the price. But you have to do what Volcker did in the 1980s, the last time we had inflation like this that has put interest rates above inflation. We have it the other way around. We’ve got a long way to go. We’d have to have a 10 year rate of about 10 or 12 percent in order to start kicking down inflation. And it’s now about under two

MARTIN: Yeah it’s under two, David. And it doesn’t seem like it wants to rise that much, either. I mean, it got back up there like 220 or so and then fell again. It’s concerning, and it’s concerning how far behind the curve the Fed is, but also how, you know, inflation has kind of a bad rap, but inflation isn’t bad if you’re growing as an economy. And I think the Biden administration and local officials screwed up by saying, Hey, we know what’s best for the economy. We know we know what to do coming out of COVID, and they got in the way. And what happened was David is all they did was just the inflation picture. All they did was cut American jobs, or at least the people that we’re working. We have jobs. People just don’t want to take them because they’re getting paid to stay home. And so therefore the economy has been messed with by the politics that were involved. And so therefore this economy is not even breathing on its own. So it can’t even take care of the inflation that it would normally take care of.

ASMAN: And even though inflation was growing great guns before the Russian invasion was even on the radar screen. We now have President Biden blaming Russia for all of this inflation that we’ve had. Steve Rattner, by the way, who was an Obama economic adviser, Steve Rattner said today, that’s not true. These are February numbers and only include small Russia. In fact, this is Biden’s inflation, and he needs to own it. This is an Obama economic adviser, so nobody’s going to believe Biden in blaming Russia, are they?

MARTIN: No, I hope not. But they’re finding excuses as they have been this whole administration.

ASMAN: It was a supply chain problem. Now it’s Russia, who knows?

MARTIN: Not to mention the war on oil that he’s set to stage the day he got into office. So the other problem, too, is that really still bothers me is that little anecdote he told the American people about. When I think it was Joe Biden’s cousin or friend, Marianne came over and told him how expensive a pound of ground beef was. Well, that was over five dollars. We need Marianne to go over there again and tell him how expensive everything else is because it seems like he doesn’t even know.

ASMAN: By the way, you’re in Chicago, you know a lot about commodities. They’re going sky high as well, right?

MARTIN: They are. Commodities were limited up a couple of days ago. They’re going up on days when you’d expect them actually to drop and pull back so they keep rising. Chicago Another place that just got destroyed by political environment as far as just interference cut down the economy and it really messed up with

ASMAN: Fertilizer disappearing on world markets because they can’t get the food. Yeah, well, they can’t get the natural gas that they need to make. The fertilizer trade happens to food prices. Unbelievable. Scott Martin, good to see you. Safe travels.