Sacks @ 00:15:34Inconclusive
economygovernment
For at least the foreseeable future (multi‑year), the U.S. will not again see a fiscal‑plus‑monetary stimulus episode as large and aggressive as the 2020–2021 Covid period; there will be no comparable "party" of massive money airdrops into the economy.
I don't think it's ever going to be quite the party that it was in 2020 and 2021, where both the fed and the federal government were just airdropping money into the economy... it's never going to be like that again, because we're never going to have that magnitude of money airdropped on the economy.View on YouTube
Explanation
Evidence strongly supports that, so far, the U.S. has not repeated anything close to the 2020–2021 COVID-era combination of massive fiscal stimulus plus ultra-aggressive monetary easing, but the prediction’s open‑ended time frame (“for the foreseeable future / never again”) means it cannot be definitively judged yet.
On the COVID era:
- The CARES Act alone was a ~$2.2 trillion package—about 10% of U.S. GDP—with large direct cash payments to households, expanded unemployment benefits, and big support for firms and state/local governments. (en.wikipedia.org)
- Additional relief followed via the $2.3 trillion Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 (including ~$900 billion in further COVID relief) and the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, both of which also featured direct payments and large temporary income supports. (en.wikipedia.org)
- In parallel, the Federal Reserve expanded its balance sheet from about $4.2 trillion pre‑pandemic to roughly $8–9 trillion through massive asset purchases (QE), creating several trillion dollars of new reserves in 2020–2021. (federalreserve.gov)
Since January 26, 2024 (prediction date) through November 30, 2025:
- There have been no new nationwide federal stimulus‑check programs or similar broad “airdrop” style payments. The IRS and fact‑checkers repeatedly state that, as of mid‑ to late‑2025, online claims about new $1,390–$2,000 federal stimulus checks are false, and that no new federal Economic Impact Payments have been authorized. The last federal payments relate to the 2021 American Rescue Plan; the final deadline to claim missed amounts via the Recovery Rebate Credit was April 15, 2025. (apnews.com)
- Any new federal tax legislation in this period (e.g., the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act proposal) is on the order of tens of billions, focused on credits and business provisions—not multi‑trillion, one‑off cash infusions comparable to CARES/ARP. (en.wikipedia.org)
- Large Biden‑era packages like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, CHIPS and Science Act, and Inflation Reduction Act are substantial but structured as long‑term investment and tax‑credit programs, not sudden broad cash airdrops into household bank accounts. (en.wikipedia.org)
- On the monetary side, the Fed has been in tightening or at most mildly easing mode, not launching a new wave of QE. After ending pandemic‑era asset purchases in 2022 and starting quantitative tightening, it has gradually reduced its balance sheet from a ~$9 trillion peak to about $6.6–7 trillion, and only in late 2025 is it stopping further shrinkage rather than expanding again. Policy rates remain in the roughly 3.75–5% range after a series of modest cuts, far from the near‑zero/ZIRP stance of 2020. (congress.gov)
Implication:
- Empirically, from early 2024 through late 2025, there has indeed been no repeat of a 2020–2021‑style dual shock of multi‑trillion fiscal transfers plus emergency‑level QE and zero rates. This is consistent with Sacks’s thesis that “it’s never going to be quite the party that it was in 2020 and 2021.”
- However, his statement is effectively open‑ended (“never going to be like that again” / multi‑year foreseeable future), and we are less than two years out from the prediction. There is no defined end date by which the non‑occurrence of another such episode would make the prediction definitively true, so logically it remains too early to say it is right or wrong.
Because the observed data so far align with the prediction but the time horizon is not yet closed, the appropriate verdict is "inconclusive" rather than “right” or “wrong.”