Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman argued that the US should open its doors to “increased immigration,” saying such a shift in policy can be simpler at combating inflation than raising rates of interest.
“Doesn’t it make more sense to moderate wage inflation with increased immigration than by raising rates, destroying demand, putting people out of labor, and causing a recession?” Ackman wrote on Twitter late Thursday.
The CEO of Pershing Square Capital added that the Federal Reserve faces an uphill battle against key challenges, including the present wave of rampant wage inflation that’s pushing prices higher and sapping corporate profits.
“Inflation might be mitigated by reducing demand and/or by increasing supply. The federal reserve can only reduce demand by raising rates, a really blunt tool,” he wrote. “Wage inflation will likely proceed until rates rise to restrictive levels.”
“Doesn’t it make more sense to moderate wage inflation with increased immigration than by raising rates, destroying demand, putting people out of labor, and causing a recession?”Bloomberg via Getty Images
Pershing Square chief executive Bill Ackman said that increasing immigration is likely to be simpler at combating inflation than higher rates of interest.Getty Images/EyeEm
Ackman — who has a net price of $2.5 billion, based on Bloomberg — concluded his tweetstorm saying, “if we are able to goal immigration policy to realize necessary political objectives like catalyzing a Russian talent drain to the US, why shouldn’t we?”
Ackman’s comments come on the heels of the Federal Reserve raising rates by 0.75 percentage points this week for the third straight time, after which Fed chairman Jerome Powell said, “we now have got to get inflation behind us; I wish there have been a painless approach to do this. There isn’t.”
