Financial guru and Donald Trump adviser Wilbur Ross told Newsmax TV that he thinks the Federal Reserve will finally raise interest rates at its next meeting.
The WL Ross & Co. chairman and CEO told "Newsmax Prime" host J.D. Hayworth that the nation's central bank was "wrong" and actually created more problems by delaying a hike and keeping investors in suspense for most of the year.
“I think that the rates will go up in December. I can't judge whether the dawdling that they did was politically motivated or not, but whatever the motivations, it was wrong,” said the private equity billionaire reportedly under consideration for one of the Trump administration's top economic roles.
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Most stock-market experts widely expects the Fed to hike rates when it meets on Dec. 13-14. The cost of borrowing money was last increased in December 2015, the first such move in more than nine years.
“If the only thing that keeps our economy together is one-quarter of 1 percent on interest rates, then we've got nothing going for us anyway.," he explained. "I think that's a joke and I think that they have created more problems by vacillating on interest rates by creating uncertainty in the markets than they would have created by raising the rates. So I believe that they will raise the rates the next time around and I believe they should,” he said.
Ross — whose name has surfaced as a possible Donald Trump pick for Commerce secretary — deflected comment on whether he was in talks to take on the role. But he said every economic official in the Trump administration must press ahead with the president-elect's plans on taxes because they would fuel corporate investment — and spending.
Ross also decried the lack of capital investment by corporations under an Obama administration. "Capital investment by corporations has been one of the big laggards in the recent very mild, weak recovery," Ross told Hayworth.
An investor and businessman who made his billions advising bankruptcies and restructuring flailing companies, Ross was No. 20 in Newsmax's 100 Most Influential Business Leaders in America.
(Newsmax wire services contributed to this report).
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