US Economy: Billionaire Investor Has Stern Warning About Inflation Dangers

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn has a warning for the U.S. economy: there is too much money in the system and the markets will eventually have a reckoning.

In an interview Monday with CNBC, Icahn warned that the economy may be heading toward a "crisis" and that it may "hit the wall" in the long run. The primary problem he sees is an overextended money supply from trillions of dollars spent in stimulus measures and asset buying by the Federal Reserve to address the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I really think there will be a crisis the way we are going, the way we are printing money, the way we are going into inflation,” Icahn warned.

Since March 2020, Congress has enacted several multitrillion-dollar stimulus bills to protect workers and keep companies afloat as the pandemic forced the economy into a shutdown. President Joe Biden has been advocating for the passage of a pair of new infrastructure and social spending bills that each will cost over $1 trillion. The bills have been bogged down in Congress amid infighting within Biden’s Democratic Party.

On the monetary policy side, the Federal Reserve launched a $120 billion per month asset purchasing program to inject liquidity into the markets and nudge an economic recovery forward. Icahn’s remarks may dovetail well with arguments from Fed officials who believe the time has come to begin tapering off the asset-buying program starting in November.

Both the Fed and the White House have made their concerns about inflation known, but each believes it will pass once supply chain bottlenecks ease. However, key inflation metrics have shown increases in prices that have not been witnessed since at least 1991, raising concern that this assessment could be mistaken.

Icahn was careful to note that his prediction was not intended to be taken as a market call, but cautioned that certain costs from these pandemic-era policy choices may come back to haunt the economy later.