Steve Videtich said:
Do you see this administration making the right decisions and policy to right the ship?
They'll get some right and others wrong, same as every other administration.
I also don't know what you consider to be "right[ing] the ship"; if you're talking about the economy the ship is upright in the water, but tenuously so. Unemployment is down, GDP is back up, and consumer spending is back to pre-pandemic levels after contracting last year. But, continued economic growth and stability over the coming months is critical to keeping it upright and pointed in the right direction.
I agree generally with the lessons learned from the Great Recession, and with the general sentiment that doing too little to stimulate the economy was the greatest short-term risk during COVID. It was certainly greater than inflation risk, or greater than the risk of even greater deficit spending. Nobody cares about inflation or an imbalanced budget when you've got negative GDP growth and high unemployment.
My biggest concern right now continues to not be inflationary, it's that the economy wanes if consumers get spooked due to COVID not declining as rapidly or as linearly as we all hoped post-vaccine rollout. A third round of stimulus is likely not prudent monetary policy and is likely politically unpalatable anyway so there's not much of a safety net where we are. We need the economy to continue organically recovering, without the aid of further stimulus, and the fed needs to keep a close eye on inflation and adjust monetary policy accordingly.
That said, we're to the point in the recovery where inflation has to become an increasing focus, as does government spending.
I'm a builder and commercial landlord so I straddle the fence with the COVID economy. Demand for our single family and multi-family product has been extremely high throughout, for which I'm very grateful but our commercial office business has taken a real beating and will continue to do so until companies and people are comfortable being back in offices again. The office landscape may be forever changed and we don't need or expect it to return to pre-pandemic demand, but right now true office occupancy (actual butts in seats during the day) is not more than around 30%-40% of what it was pre-pandemic, and that's largely due to continued personal and corporate desire to stay home until COVID is further in the background. Office demand will continue to be artificially low until COVID is less of a worry for workers and companies.
I think vaccines are the biggest weapon we have to combat the economy potentially cooling or not recovering fully if consumer and corporate behavior are impacted by COVID later this year and into 2022. So I also am very supportive of the Biden administration's focus on and support for continued vaccine adoption.
I think the focus on infrastructure and getting a bipartisan bill passed was good in theory but the bill is much too broad and expensive.
I think a high focus on renewable energy development and jobs growth is productive but I don't see the need to cut our legs out from underneath ourselves with domestic oil production, which provides us economic and national security benefits.
Basically I'm not universally supportive of any administration's work or policy but I think Biden's gotten more broad-brush stuff right than wrong. Details matter though and we've got multiple concerns to address in coming months with vaccination, spending, inflation, etc.
