Mr. Wonderful Reacts To Latest Inflation Data: ‘This Is A Nasty Report’

Investment mogul and longtime “Shark Tank” host Kevin O’Leary reacted to another round of poor inflation data during an appearance on Fox News Wednesday, calling it “a very nasty report.”

Wednesday’s long awaited inflation report revealed that consumer prices rose 0.3 percent last month, slightly beating expectations of 0.4 percent. Year-over-year, prices grew 3.4% in April, again slightly cooler than the prior month’s 3.5% annual increase

“Consumer price index, CPI, hit 3.4% in the month of April. That’s not good. Up 0.3 month over month. It’s going the wrong direction,” said Fox News host Steve Doocy when introducing O’Leary.

O’Leary pointed to a number of key metrics for consumers – including prices for essentials such as housing, groceries and shelter — when reacting negatively to the report. “It guarantees that, in my opinion, the Fed will not raise or, sorry, will not lower rates at all for the rest of this year. That’s not what you want if you’re the incumbent,” he said.

“We poured a lot of money in the economy during the pandemic,” O’Leary continued. “That turned out to be the right thing to do to avoid a depression, but then we kept going. We probably poured around two trillion too much in. Inflation Reduction Act did not reduce inflation. In fact, it’s inflationary, as you can see by these numbers.”

The “Shark Tank” investor ultimately concluded that the April report was very “nasty.”

“It is a nasty report,” Doocy followed up before pointing to Biden’s frequent insistence that the economy is in great shape.

“Well, I don’t think you can blame any politician for talking their book, but unfortunately the numbers don’t lie. Where this is manifesting itself in a problem for the current administration is inflation numbers around food, protein notably, gasoline and housing. Those are bad metrics when you’re at the voting poll,” O’Leary replied.

“And so, I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next five months, but you really want the Fed to cut rates,” he continued. “You want to talk a book about inflation going back to 2 percent. None of that’s happening. These are not good numbers for the current administration. Not at this time the election cycle. These are nasty. There’s no other way to describe them.”