Paul Tudor Jones, a hedge fund manager who founded Tudor Investment Corporation, said Wednesday that inflation poses a major threat to the United States.
“It’s probably the single biggest threat,” he said on CNBC’s Squawk Box, “to certainly financial markets and I think to society just in general.”
Jones added that he does not believe inflation is transitory, which the Federal Reserve previously claimed.
Inflation reached a 30-year high in September. The Consumer Price Index was 5.4 percent higher in September from a year earlier. This was higher than August’s numbers, which showed a 5.3 percent increase year-over-year. The CPI announcement last week was higher than economists had predicted.
Jones said inflation has been so high for so long because of the trillions of dollars in stimulus money pumped into the economy by the government and the Fed. Congress has pumped $5 trillion into the economy, while the Fed has added $4 trillion.
“Inflation can be much worse than what we fear,” he added, predicting that it will continue to rise.
The Fed is increasingly under pressure to take action to slow inflation, which has caused average real wages to decrease.
A CNBC poll released Wednesday found that fears about inflation are now tied with COVID-19 as the biggest concern for Americans.
A Fox News survey released Wednesday showed that almost nine in 10 voters are worried about inflation. Voters expressed more concern over inflation than any other issue.
Only 27 percent of Independents approve of President Joe Biden’s job performance on the economy, the survey found.
Micah Roberts, a Republican pollster for CNBC’s poll said: “Last quarter, the economic numbers were flashing yellow for Biden, but now that’s intensified and the light is flashing red, and it’s accompanied by multiple blaring sirens.”