Latest news with #JackLew
Sky News
a day ago
- Business
- Sky News
Veteran Democrat Jack Lew expresses dismay at US deficit but blames Joe Biden too
Why you can trust Sky News Jack Lew is as decorated as they come when it comes to US economic leaders from the Democratic side of the aisle having served as President Obama's treasury secretary, and before that as his director of the office for management of the budget (OMB), a role he also held in the Clinton White House, when he was instrumental in the administration balancing the budget in the late 1990s - the last time that has happened. As President Trump's "one big, beautiful bill" makes its way through Congress, Mr Lew expressed dismay at the direction of the US deficit. "The simple rule that in good economic times you ought to come as close to paying your bills in the current sense as possible, certainly not running a deficit more than 3% of GDP, is the right rule." "Then in a bad time, you don't worry about nickels and dimes. You don't worry about a COVID response or a financial crisis response," Mr Lew said on The Master Investor Podcast with Wilfred Frost. "What you can't do is never worry about it because then the hole just gets deeper and deeper and deeper. And that's why we're now looking at a deficit that is going to grow to 6% of GDP with this bill. That's terrible." 2:24 Of course, the deficit, having leapt during COVID-19 at the end of the first Trump administration, did stay elevated through the recent Biden administration, when Lew served as ambassador to Israel, and he said he felt that Biden's Build Back Better Bill was not a great decision. "The reality, the political reality at the time when there was a bill that in my own view was too large, it gave cash to people who were already working at a time when there was a concern about inflation," Mr Lew said. "The political reality was you couldn't get Democrats and Republicans to vote for something without that. If you asked me at the time was the risk of the economy not recovering great enough to take that on, I would have said you can't afford not to come out of COVID strong. "So I didn't think it was a great decision, but I don't think there was an alternative other than doing nothing, and we've seen from experience that the US recovered stronger and better than other countries from COVID, and the inflation is running its way through the system." Need for compromise Giving insights on how to balance the budget, he spoke about the need for political compromise. "I've always been able to convince most of the wisdom and the benefit of the compromise. And I work for presidents who were able and willing to make that case. "As in everything else in life, relationships matter deeply. Having a counterpart that you know and that you've worked with in the past and knows that they can trust you and you can trust them gives you the freedom to explore ideas that might actually work, but if they were prematurely made public, would be potentially very painful to either or both sides. So you have to have a space that you can talk about middle grounds in that isn't totally off limits or poisoned." Ruefully, he added, "there's no bipartisan conversations going on". An economy 'doing ok' Despite being down beat about the Trump administration's economic policies he acknowledged that "the US economy is actually doing ok", and was reassured that despite a 10% fall in the dollar so far this year, which he puts down to "policy chaos in the US", the bond market appeared calm to him - for now at least. "The economy is not yet in a place where it's in distress." But, "I think we have to be careful. Right now, I think we're in a place where there's no alternative to the dollar, which is why you're not seeing more departure from the dollar", he added. "The renminbi is not in a place where it's fully convertible and market-controlled. There's not enough high-rated European debt to meaningfully replace the dollar. "Japan mostly is a domestic lending and borrowing market. So I have always been of the view that the fact that it's not there now does not mean we should take for granted that the US dominance will be perpetual."
Fox News
2 days ago
- Business
- Fox News
Fmr. Obama Treasury Sec. concerned Zohran Mamdani will hurt New York City if elected mayor
Former President Barack Obama's treasury secretary says he is worried that mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani will ruin New York City if he wins. "The policies that he's outlined are not policies that are good for New York. He's running for mayor of New York, and I worry deeply, having spent most of my life in New York, about a city that I call home, you know it," Jack Lew, former treasury secretary, said Tuesday on CNBC's "Squawk on the Street." "I see a similarity between the kind of policy solutions to the left and the right, and, you know, that satisfy populist sentiment," Lew added. "Don't always go through the filter of, 'Do they work?' I don't think they work. And I think that's a problem." Mamdani, a 33-year-old state assembly member from Queens who was born and raised in Uganda, is a proud democratic socialist. He has recently discussed raising corporate taxes to pay for his idea to "Trump-proof" New York City. "We're talking about corporations that are making millions of dollars, not in revenue, but in profit," Mamdani said during a June 11 episode of "The Breakfast Club" radio show. "And the second is taxing the top 1% of New Yorkers. We're talking about people who make a million dollars a year or more, taxing them just by a flat 2% tax increase." During the conversation, Mamdani acknowledged that some, like rapper 50 Cent, don't approve of his ideas. "I know if 50 Cent is listening, he's not going to be happy about this," he added. "He tends to not like this tax policy, but I want to be very clear, this is about $20,000 a year. It's a rounding error. And all of these things together, they make every New Yorker's life better, including those who are actually getting taxed now." Mamdani has also come under fire for a campaign policy document that directly calls for moving NYC's tax burden onto "richer and whiter neighborhoods." But Lew, who also served as the United States ambassador to Israel from 2023 to 2025, says he is concerned about Mamdani's policies, and how the state would respond. "One of the things I'll say about New York is that New York is not an entirely independent governing entity," Lew said. "Many of the policies have to be approved by the state legislature or governor," he added. "So it's a process where you have more centrist political voices that will still be very much in a position to determine whether or not different tax and spending policies can take effect. You know, I think the Democratic Party is well served by building the center out. And that means appealing to the center left and the center right. I think going to either extreme in either party tends to polarize the country. So that's my own personal view. But I really can't speak to the party politics part of it."
CNBC
2 days ago
- Business
- CNBC
Former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew: Mamdani's policies are not good for New York
Former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew joins Wilfred Frost to discuss outlooks on the policies of New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, the path forward for the Democratic party, and more.
