In May of this year, the Labor Department’s Consumer Price Index, a top gauge of inflation, showed that April 2021 prices had jumped 4.2% over those recorded in April 2020. Prior to this, inflation had remained relatively dormant. But COVID-19 changed that. 

In this episode, Maurice Obstfeld, Professor of Economics at Berkeley, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, discusses the current state of inflation, where we might be heading, and the impact of COVID-19. He also talks about unemployment, possible corporate tax hikes, and provides his advice for the Biden administration as it navigates these choppy waters.