Secretary of the Treasury anticipates that inflation in the US will not normalize until the end of 2022

The Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, Janet Yellen, attributed the current levels of inflation in the country to the generalized crisis caused by the coronavirus and said that she hopes that the situation will be restored within a year, although everything will depend on the evolution of the pandemic.

In an interview broadcast this Sunday by the CBS television network, Yellen said that she is confident that prices will return to normal levels “sometime in the second half of next year”.

For this it will be necessary before, he pointed out, that the “labor supply and demand pattern”And get out of the health emergency that the country entered in March 2020 due to the pandemic.

Inflation in the United States soared last October to 6.2%, a figure not seen in 30 years, caused in part by the conjunction of strong consumer demand and problems in the supply chain, both nationally and globally, due to to the pandemic.

The Secretary of the Treasury noted that the pandemic “Our economy almost closed” and caused a “dramatic increase” on the demand.

“The pandemic has been making the decisions for the economy and inflation. And if we want to lower inflation, I believe that continuing to advance against the pandemic is the most important thing we can do“, said.

Yellen explained that, due to temporary restrictions on mobility and access to leisure facilities, the spending patterns of the country’s households changed. “And although the supply of products has increased in the United States and worldwide, not as much as the demand”, He justified.

Last October, consumer prices rose 9 tenths compared to September, according to data published this Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which certified that it is the fifth consecutive month in which year-on-year inflation has been higher in the United States. of 5%.

Yellen agrees in this diagnosis with the president of the US central bank, Jerome Powell, who stressed last week that high inflation is due to factors “transient“And estimated that the rise in prices will begin”to moderate in the second or third quarter of 2022″.

But Yellen He does not have them all with him and, questioned whether inflation will be normalized when the legislative elections of November 2022 arrive, he reiterated that it is not so much in the hands of the Government as of the coronavirus: “It really depends on the pandemic”.