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'The Big Short' investor Michael Burry slams Biden, the Fed, and the Treasury for being ignorant of history — and scarily blind to the inflation threat

Jun 9, 2022, 18:10 IST
Business Insider
Michael Burry.Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images
  • Michael Burry blasted President Biden, the Fed, and the Treasury for their pandemic policies.
  • "The Big Short" investor called them ignorant of history and scarily unaware of the inflation risks.
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Michael Burry accused President Biden and both Treasury and Federal Reserve officials of being ignorant about history, and worryingly blind to the risk their pandemic-era policies would result in crushing inflation.

"US Fed, POTUS, Treasury do not know history and, frighteningly, could not see devastating inflation coming," Burry tweeted on Wednesday.

The investor of "The Big Short" fame shared a clip from an episode of "Tucker Carlson Tonight" that aired on Fox News in February 2021. In the clip, Carlson highlights a tweet from Burry warning the US government was "inviting inflation" by spending aggressively and boosting the money supply — even though retail sales and manufacturing were rebounding, the economy was reopening, and the costs of labor and logistics were soaring.

Carlson also touted another of Burry's tweets, in which the Scion Asset Management boss drew parallels between Germany's path to hyperinflation in the 1920s, and America's economic trajectory in the spring of 2021.

Burry, a student of financial history, has repeatedly warned of inflation during the pandemic. As early as April 2020, he cautioned the US economy's reopening could supercharge demand and send prices skyward.

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"#History is not useless," he tweeted in February 2021, emphasizing the relevance of the US inflation crisis in the 1970s to the present day. "Prepare for inflation," he advised in another tweet that month.

Burry continues to bemoan inflation today. He asserted this week the US dollar is weaker than it appears because of its declining purchasing power. "We all see it every single day in prices of everything," he said.

He has also pointed out that inflation is eating into Americans' savings, threatening both consumer spending and corporate profits, and making a recession more likely.

The hedge-fund manager shot to fame after his billion-dollar wager against the mid-2000s housing bubble was featured in the book and the movie "The Big Short." He's also known for betting against Elon Musk's Tesla and Cathie Wood's Ark Innovation fund last year, and for his past investments in GameStop, which helped pave the way for the meme-stock craze.

Moreover, the contrarian investor has frequently called out the rampant hype and reckless gambling on risky assets during the pandemic. He sounded the alarm on the "greatest speculative bubble of all time in all things" last summer, and told owners of meme stocks and cryptocurrencies that they barreling towards the "mother of all crashes."

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Read more: Goldman Sachs' star economist lays out whether the US is heading for a recession and reveals what could trigger a rebound in the floundering stock market following the crash

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