The Covid-19 recession technically ended in April 2020. At two months, it was one of the shortest economic recessions in history. Since then, we have experienced record inflation. Last summer, we sat down with Mohamed El-Erian, who was an early voice warning about the coming inflation, how to understand it, and what its implications could be. But were the inflationary trends already in place prior to the pandemic? Did the covid response policies of governments here and abroad accelerate those trends? And how do we unwind an inflationary cycle? Today we are reposting that conversation with. Dr Mohamed El-Erian is President of Queens' College, Cambridge University. He serves as part-time Chief Economic Advisor at Allianz and Chair of Gramercy Fund Management. He’s a Professor at The Wharton School, he is a Financial Times contributing editor, Bloomberg Opinion columnist, and the author of two New York Times best sellers. He serves on several non-profit boards, including the NBER, and those of Barclays and Under Armour. From 2007-2014, Mohammed served as CEO/co-CIO of PIMCO, which has over two trillion dollars under management. He worked at PIMCO for a total of fourteen years, and was chair of President Obama's Global Development Council. He also served two years as president and CEO of Harvard Management Company, the entity that manages Harvard’s endowment. He has been chair of the Microsoft Investment Advisory Board since 2007. He holds a master's degree and doctorate (economics) from Oxford and received his bachelor and master degrees from Cambridge University. Mohammed is expert in a lot of things when it comes to the financial markets and the macro economy, especially inflation. So he’s going to help us make sense of the madness. Is this inflation transitory or is it here to stay for a while, and if so, what should we do about it?
