Janet Yellen reassures everyday Americans: Financial outlook remains stable

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Americans on Tuesday that their household finances were “quite strong” despite numerous polls indicating that’s not at all what average families are seeing from their kitchen tables.

Yellen made the assertion during an interview that aired on CNBC, where she concede that some lower-income families might be close to “exhausting” any buffers they may have had with regard to savings — but insisted that otherwise, household finances and the economy as a whole were “quite strong.”

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.⁦@SecYellen⁩ tells Americans that their household finances are “quite strong” pic.twitter.com/gV1ns38B4U

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) April 9, 2024

“I believe inflation will continue to come down,” Yellen said — and when asked whether she believed the economy would “continue to hold up” in the days to come, she replied, “I think we’ve got a good, strong economy.”

“We’ve got very strong domestic demand, consumers are holding up — some low income consumers are perhaps exhausting their buffers of saving that they built up during the pandemic, we’re seeing a little bit more distress at the household level there, but generally households are in very good financial shape, our financial system is generally quite strong,” Yellen continued.

Yellen’s comments come on the heels of a number of polls indicating that average Americans do not agree with her — and many of them believe they were economically better off under former President Donald Trump than they have been under President Joe Biden.

A recent evaluation of several polls — compiled in late March by the Brookings Institution — showed that nearly across the board, Americans don’t believe the Biden economy has done them any favors.

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A New York Times poll conducted in early March, for example, showed that just 26% saw economic conditions as “excellent or good.” More than half (51%) said conditions were “poor” and 23% said that economic conditions were “fair.”

An Economist/YouGov survey published in late March did not paint a rosier picture for Biden: just over one-fifth of voters (21%) believed the economy was getting better, while more than half (52%) said that it was getting worse.

A March poll from CBS News took things a step further, asking voters to directly compare Biden’s economy to Trump’s: when they did so, only 38% rated Biden’s economy as good — compared to 65% who said Trump’s economy was good.

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