‘Average People May Be on to Something Here’: Wall Street Week
Hubbard says the public knows prices for the things they’re buying are still higher even as inflation falls
Glenn Hubbard of the Columbia Graduate School of Business
Photographer: David Paul Morris/BloombergWelcome to the Wall Street Week newsletter, where the best minds on Global Wall Street give you some investing food for thought from our conversations on Bloomberg Television. I'm David Westin, and this week we talked with our special contributor, Larry Summers of Harvard, about generative AI's potential effects, with Glenn Hubbard of the Columbia Business School about the economic plight of incumbents, and with Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group about the danger of the French elections. If you're not yet a subscriber, sign up here for this newsletter and for daily markets analysis from Bloomberg Surveillance.
US economic numbers this week pointed to some softness, with retail sales numbers growing only one-tenth of a percent in May, while housing starts were down 5.5% -- both well below what had been expected. Our special contributor, Larry Summers of Harvard, says it's hard to know "whether we're really seeing a profound slowing or month-to-month fluctuations." He does know, however, that former President Trump's "enthusiasm for tariffs as the centerpiece of economic strategy" is extreme. As he puts it, this idea "is way beyond what has traditionally even fallen within the discourse."