(Bloomberg) -- BlackRock Inc. Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink said stubbornly high inflation will force the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates two to four more times.
“The Fed is not finished,” Fink said Wednesday during a financial services conference hosted by Deutsche Bank AG. “Inflation is still too strong, too sticky.”
Fink, 70, said there’s no guarantee that the US economy will tip into a recession and that it “would be modest if we even have one.” He said he expects inflation to remain at 4% to 5% “for some time,” in part because of the lingering effects of government stimulus programs.
“I just don’t see the evidence around a reduction in inflation,” Fink said.
BlackRock, which managed $9.09 trillion at the end of the first quarter, has seen a surge in client money flowing into bond funds after the Fed began hiking rates last year.
While he praised the bipartisan deal to suspend the nation’s debt ceiling, Fink said the recurring crisis is “destabilizing” to how investors view the US.
Read More: Debt-Limit Deal Heads to House Vote After Clearing Key Hurdle
“The United States is jeopardizing its reserve currency status through this drama,” Fink said. “No one ever thought about the validity of the dollar, the strength of the dollar. We’re now raising those questions.”
(Updates with additional Fink comments starting in third paragraph.)
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