mr. zandy, what is the state of our economy right now? >> greta, it's struggling. we saw that in the december data for the economy. we lost jobs in december. retail sales declined. claims for unemployment insurance remain consistently above about a million per week. just for context in a well functioning economy we should be seeing something like 200 and 250,000 initial claims for unemployment insurance. sentiment is very soft. and obviously it's not hard to connect the straugling economy back to the pandemic. the reintensification of the virus, the hospitalizations, the deaths has had an impact on the entire global economy but also here at home in the united states so the economy is weak. >> what if congress and president trump had not signed into law the covid relief money that we saw the first round of it and the money that followed? what if that hadn't happened? >> it would have been much worse. the support from the federal government has been i think the word is massive, and it's been critical to keeping the economy together as well. if you totaled it all up a

mr. zandi? guest: on inflation, as you know, inflation is very low. it has consistently been below the target the federal reserve set of 2%. 2% is kind of their bogey. it is reasonable, not too high, not too low. we can talk about why. we've been consistently below 2%. we are still well below 2%. i don't think that that is going to rise in a significant way, even back to the 2% target, at least not in a consistent way until the economy is back closer to full employment, until we get those 10 million jobs that we lost during the pandemic back. we've got a long way to go. even if president biden got his $1.9 trillion package, under my calculations, we don't get back to full employment for another two, two and a half years. so that is a long road. i'm not worried about that. you could even go as far as to say the federal reserve wants higher inflation. they don't one inflation below 2%, so they are working really hard. that is why they are keeping interest rates close to zero, so they can get inflation back to that target. hopefully they succeed, and i t

mr. zandi? guest: on inflation, as you know, inflation is very low.s consistently been below the target the federal reserve set of 2%. 2% is kind of their bogey. it is reasonable, not too high, not too low. we can talk about why. we've been consistently below 2%. we are still well below 2%. i don't think that that is going to rise in a significant way, even back to the 2% target, at least not in a consistent way until the economy is back closer to full employment, until we get those 10 million jobs that we lost during the pandemic back. we've got a long way to go. even if president biden got his $1.9 trillion package, under my calculations, we don't get back to full employment for another two, two and a half years. so that is a long road. i'm not worried about that. you could even go as far as to say the federal reserve wants higher inflation. they don't one inflation below 2%, so they are working really hard. that is why they are keeping interest rates close to zero, so they can get inflation back to that target. hopefully they succeed, and i think t

mr. zandi? guest: on inflation, as you know, inflation is very low.has consistently been below the target the federal reserve set of 2%. 2% is kind of their bogey. it is reasonable, not too high, not too low. we can talk about why. we've been consistently below 2%. we are still well below 2%. i don't think that that is going to rise in a significant way, even back to the 2% target, at least not in a consistent way until the economy is back closer to full employment, until we get those 10 million jobs that we lost during the pandemic back. we've got a long way to go. even if president biden got his $1.9 trillion package, under my calculations, we don't get back to full employment for another two, two and a half years. so that is a long road. i'm not worried about that. you could even go as far as to say the federal reserve wants higher inflation. they don't one inflation below 2%, so they are working really hard. that is why they are keeping interest rates close to zero, so they can get inflation back to that target. hopefully they succeed, and i think