Jaspreet Singh: Why a Recession Is Less of a Concern Than Inflation in 2025
Written by
Nicole Spector
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Molly Sullivan
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The stock market has been stormy and alarm bells are sounding on Wall Street, signaling worry over a looming recession. It could happen, but there could be another more imminent concern to face down: inflation.
Financial expert Jaspreet Singh posted a video on his YouTube channel, The Minority Mindset, in which he talks about why, in 2025, a recession may be less of a concern than inflation. Why? Frankly, we just have a lot more evidence that inflation is rising — and it’s becoming increasingly problematic for consumers and employees.
Recent Reports Show Inflation Is Rising
Here’s the fact of the matter: Recent reports show that inflation isn’t going down; it’s going up. In January, it rose to 3% — its highest rate for six months, and higher than what economists predicted (they expected it to be at 2.9%). Back in September, inflation was at 2.4%. At that time, the Federal Reserve believed we’d finally beat inflation. Well, clearly, we hadn’t — inflation has risen month over month since.
This Issue Started in 2020
Singh asserted that the current inflation epidemic roots back to the $5 trillion the government borrowed from the Federal Reserve Bank in 2020, when the U.S. was blindsided by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The only problem was the Federal Reserve Bank didn’t have $5 trillion. So in order to loan $5 trillion to the United States government, the Federal Reserve Bank had to create this $5 trillion essentially out of thin air,” Singh said. “Everybody had money.”
And that money was free, which, as we all know, isn’t really a thing. There’s always a consequence, and in this case the consequence was and is inflation.
“This is where the Federal Reserve Bank has been working to try to correct the inflation problem,” Singh said. “But they’re not correcting it in the way you might think; they don’t want the prices of things to come down. That is called deflation. They want the prices of things to rise less quickly. This is called disinflation.”
Why aim for disinflation and not deflation? Because deflation indicates that the economy is going into a recession. The Fed wants inflation to lower to 2%, but it does not, for example, want inflation to go down to 0%. Yet here we are, with prices going back up.
The Federal Reserve Bank Isn’t Making Any Big Moves Yet
The Federal Reserve Bank was confident that it had achieved disinflation, but now that inflation is trending up, it’s apparent that the problem persists. What now?
“Between 2020 and 2022, it was a lot of stimulus, a lot of money printing, a lot of cutting of interest rates, which created the inflation problem,” Singh said. “Then between 2022 and 2023, it was raising interest rates to kind of fight the inflation problem. Now the Federal Reserve Bank wants to do a couple of things: They want to stimulate the economy, but they also don’t want to make inflation worse, and they’re trying to figure out how to navigate that, especially with the Trump economic policies which create a lot of uncertainty.”
At the time Singh posted this video in late February, the Fed indicated that it was just going to “hang tight” as Singh put it, and not make any big moves. That sentiment doesn’t seem to have changed.
On March 7, Federal Reserve Gov. Adriana Kugler told CNBC, “Given the recent increase in inflation expectations and the key inflation categories that have not shown progress toward our 2% target, it could be appropriate to continue holding the policy rate at its current level for some time.”
The Top 4 Areas That Saw the Most Inflation From February 2024 to 2025
Generally, inflation doesn’t cause the prices of every consumer good item to rise. Singh noted that over the past 12 months, we’ve seen inflation hit hardest on the following four categories: housing costs, prescription drug prices, airfare and, at No. 1, auto insurance prices.
The Top 4 Areas That Saw Negative Inflation From February 2024 to 2025
Singh highlighted the four areas where we saw the biggest price drops over the past 12 months. Those areas are furniture, rental cars, electronics and appliance prices.
Inflation Hurts Some People More Than Others
Just as inflation does not jack up prices on every single thing, it does not hurt every single person — at least, not to the extent that it harms some.
“Inflation disproportionately hurts consumers and it disproportionately hurts employees more than it hurts asset owners,” Singh said. “Inflation actually benefits asset owners.”
It does this because it makes companies more money as consumers are forced to spend more on its products or services.
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