St. Louis Fed President James Bullard tried to tone down the upcoming surge in unemployment rate. He told CNBC that “you’d have this huge spike mostly centered in the second quarter, but everyone knows exactly what that is, that’s pandemic relief that’s done on purpose”.
He added that “once the virus goes away and if we play our cards right and keep everything intact, then everyone will go back to work and everything will be fine.” The economy could see a “boom quarter where there’s a lot of production at that point” thanks to “pent-up demand” resulting from the period of low activity.