joining us now is former treasury secretary under president obama, jack lew.t's talk about the elephant in the room, the r word, because we're hearing it thrown around a lot more. are we going to see a recession? >> i think anyone who predicts with certainty where we're going is exaggerating what they can know right now. i think we can expect volatility, we can expect it to be bumpy because we're dealing with still exiting from covid, a war in europe, and a difficult adjustment under the best of circumstances from extraordinary intervention to deal with the covid economic crisis, back to normal. so if you weren't dealing with all of the factors that you don't control, you would have about a 50/50 chance of avoiding having some economic downturn, whether it is a recession, that will depend. it doesn't have to be a recession. it could be bumpy. and i think anyone who says they know with certainty it will be is getting ahead of what we can know now. one has to expect that when you raise interest rates it will slow down economic activity. that's how you control in

joining us now is former treasury secretary jack lew. anks for being with me today. first defining terms i know there are these textbook definitions of a recession, but what's the definition that really matters right now and how likely are we to be in one by the end of the year? >> it's good to be with you, jon. i think the technical definitions of recession are less the issue than where is the economy going to be going. when you have high inflation and the fed raises rates, you know that the goal is to slow economic growth and to slow the economy down the question is, can you hit a soft landing i think what we should expect is it's going to be a bumpy ride. whether that becomes a technical recession or not is a separate question from is the fed making its policy trying to control inflation while trying to avoid a deep economic slowdown i give them a lot of credit for having been patient, waiting until the data was clear that we had strong growth coming out of the covid recession. one can argue whether they should have moved a month or tw

the former treasury secretary jack lew was on our air, he said, it is going to be bumpy and to try tonths is very, very difficult here in terms of recession worries, and in terms of whether the fed can actually execute what we call a soft landing. we just don't know how it is going to work out. we know what the fed did yesterday was pretty historic, first time since 1994, that was basically three rate hikes in one move, and na shows you how serious they're taking the inflation threat here. we saw the jobless claims numbers earlier this morning, this is a weekly reading. look, this is a number that is now back above prepandemic average. it is a proxy for layoffs. we'll watch this very closely to see if you start to see layoffs pick up and hiring slow a little bit. which is ironically something that the fed kind of would like to see, because they're trying to cool off an overheating economy with an overheating job market. >> we were talking about this in the break, you talked about the patience being given medicine, the patient being our economy, the medicine being 75 basis point cut. a

and that was actually something that former treasury secretary jack lew, who served in the obama administration that. >> at the time my critique of the package was it wasn't well targeted. it didn't put money in the hands of people in the lower middle class, the people at the lower end as much as it should have, compared to people who were going to save it. >> is he right there? could it have been better targeted? >> well, certainly, and you always know that with policy there is always the perfect, right? but here's the thing, that piece of legislation has been remarkably effective, more so than any recovery in recent memory, at getting people back to work and back to work quickly. and that was the president's goal. we needed to get all those folks who lost their jobs through the pandemic, all those businesses that were struggling to recover from the pandemic, we needed to make those things full again and get people back into the economy. we did that effectively and far faster than forecasters predicted. so, yes, on the margins, maybe there is some things that could have been done to aim for pe

we should note that later in the broadcast we are going to speak to the former treasury secretary jack lewwill be release add short time from now. >>> donald trump said to be weighing a decision on when -- when, not weather -- but when to announce a 2024 bid and it might come sooner than you think. we have new cnn reporting ahead. >>> and the suspect in the buffalo mass shooting due to appear in court this morning as police reveal a chilling motive for the supermarket massacre. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ introducing the all-new infiniti qx60. take on your wild world in style. ♪ throughout history i've observed markets shaped by the intentional and unforeseeable. for investors who can navigate thisandscape, leraging gold, a strategic and sustainable asset... the path is gilded with the potential for rich returns. before treating your chronic migraine— 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting 4 hours or more you're not the only one with questions about botox®. botox® prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine before they even start—with about 10 minutes of treatment once every 3 months. so, ask y