The U.S. economy is still very, very hot, he said on Monday at the Caixin Asia New Vision Forum in Singapore, where he attended via video link, according to Bloomberg. 

The United States is, today, an underlying 4.5-5% inflation country, he said.

Summers is a longtime hawk on inflation, arguing that the massive U.S. stimulus during the COVID pandemic would eventually lead to higher prices throughout the economy. He also argued that low unemployment and high wage growth were increasing prices, suggesting that cooling the economy and getting prices under control might require a 6% unemployment rate.

The Federal Reserve came around to Summers hawkish view, and the U.S. central bank has increased interest rates at every one of its monthly meetings since March 2022. 

The Fed will meet later this week to determine whether to change interest rates again. Most economists believe that the U.S. central bank will pause its interest rate hikes this month, notes Reuters, as rate hikes helped spur the banking crisis earlier this year, leading to a tightening in credit markets. 

U.S. inflation continued to decline in April, with prices increasing 4.9% year-on-year, down significantly from a peak of 9% almost a year ago. Yet core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, remains elevated at 5.5% year-on-year. Core inflation hasnt come in below 4.5% since September 2021.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its inflation figures for May on Tuesday morning. The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland projects a 4.2% year-on-year increase in the consumer price index for May, and a 5.3% increase in core inflation.

Pockets of distress

Summers is also skeptical of the U.S.s ability to achieve a hoped-for soft landingwhich he called the triumph of hope over experience on Monday. (A soft landing is when a country is able to get inflation under control without sparking a recession.)

The former Treasury Secretary said he saw pockets of distress in commercial real estate, according to Bloomberg. 

The shift to working-from-home is severely testing owners of office buildings, as tenants scale back their footprints due to having more remote employees. Increasing interest rates will also lead to a spike in loan payments for borrowers, sending some into default.

A collapse in commercial real estate would then hit lenders, mostly small and medium-sized banks. Lenders with less than $250 billion in assets provide roughly 80% of commercial real estate lending, according to a recent analysis by Goldman Sachs. Banks are also lending less, which puts more downward pressure on property values.

Whats happening in the office sector is apocalyptical, Fred Cordova, founder of real estate brokerage Corion Enterprises, previously told Fortune. 

Berlusconi was hospitalized in Milan on Friday just three weeks after being released from a previous treatment. He had a history of heart ailments, including a malfunctioning valve that surgeons replaced in 2016, and was hospitalized for a lung infection in 2020 after contracting Covid-19. 

Berlusconi was one of the most influential figures in Italian politics of the last three decades. He built a television empire in the 1980s before deploying his showmanship and talent for catchy sound bites to win three national elections. 

He served more than nine years as prime minister, leading four different cabinets, an unprecedented tenure in a country plagued by revolving-door governments. He also played kingmaker in bringing center-right coalitions to power, even when his party was no longer the dominant force. 

Berlusconi faced a string of judicial proceedings yet faced only one conviction, in a tax fraud case that saw him lose his parliamentary seat, though only temporarily.

Despite his wealth his fortune was estimated at $7.4 billion as of April 2023, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index Berlusconi cast himself as a man of the people, an outsider challenging a discredited ruling class with a promise of national renewal. 

His style and rhetoric were similar to the rallies of a military leader, a politician, an athletic coach, but most of all they resembled talks of an American self-help guru, Alexander Stille wrote in his 2006 biography of Berlusconi, The Sack of Rome.  

Many voters identified with Berlusconi, convinced that his success story would rub off on them. Opponents saw him as simply exploiting his political power to further his corporate interests. 

Written off repeatedly by commentators and political rivals following bruising electoral defeats and scandals in his business and private life, Berlusconi found ways to bounce back again and again. Those who dismissed him as a buffoon because of his countless faux pas such as referring to US President Barack Obamas tan, and comparing himself to Jesus Christ underestimated his appeal with voters. 

Il Cavaliere (The Knight), as he was widely known, promised an Italian miracle. Instead, he oversaw repeated bouts of recession in one of the weakest euro-zone economies. In his last years in power, he struggled to overcome a scandal over alleged bunga bunga sex parties that he described as elegant dinners.

Russias invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was an embarrassment for Berlusconi, who had long boasted of his friendship with President Vladimir Putin and welcomed him as a guest at his luxurious villa on Sardinias Emerald Coast. 

Berlusconi made headlines in February 2023, when an audio recording emerged in which he praised the Russian leader, said hed rekindled their friendship through gifts and letters, and blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russias invasion. He later issued a statement saying that Italy was clearly siding with the NATO military alliance and the European Union in opposing Russias invasion of Ukraine.

Love Songs

Berlusconi was born on Sept. 29, 1936, in Milan to Luigi Berlusconi, a bank manager, and Rosa Bossi, a secretary. After graduating from law school in 1961, he learned how to charm listeners as a door-to-door salesman and then as a crooner of Frank Sinatra standards and Neapolitan love songs in nightclubs and on cruise ships.

Later he dabbled in real estate, building a residential complex east of Milan in the late 1960s. A decade later, he started Italys first private television network. This eventually became Mediaset, the nations biggest private broadcaster, offering a mixture of B-movies, American soap operas, game shows and titillation. 

Mediaset evolved into MFE-MediaForEurope NV, with interests in Spanish and German broadcasting. Berlusconis family holding company, Fininvest SpA, also has interests in publishing and financial services and is led by his eldest daughter, Marina. Fininvest had revenue of about 3.8 billion ($4.2 billion) in 2021 and more than 15,000 employees, according to the companys website. 

Contract With Italians 

By the early 1990s, Berlusconi was one of Italys richest citizens and a household name. He decided to set up a political party, Forza Italia, or Go Italy, the chant used to spur on the national soccer team. The choice reflected a passion for the game that had led him to buy historic club AC Milan in 1986. He sold the team over 30 years later to a group of Chinese investors. 

Berlusconis media empire relayed his political platform calling for lower taxes, less bureaucracy and a more competitive business environment. Within four months of forming Forza Italia, he was elected prime minister, the first person to assume the role without any prior experience of government or public administration.

His first government collapsed after less than a year when his Northern League ally abandoned him over pension reform. But his theatrics had resonated with Italians. In the 2001 election campaign, he took a cue from former US Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and signed a Contract with Italians on national television. 

The five-point plan, including tax cuts, 1.5 million new jobs, increased pension spending and vast public-works projects, helped him to secure one of the biggest majorities since World War II and build a center-right coalition that lasted a full five-year term. 

Startled Queen

While unemployment did fall during Berlusconis second term, it didnt shrink enough to meet the job-creation goal. Income taxes remained high, with a top rate of 43%. His signature public-works proposal a bridge between Sicily and the mainland remains a dream. 

After a spell in opposition, the comeback master won another landslide in 2008, but his final term was cut short by a debt crisis and his authority undermined by scandals over his penchant for models and showgirls. 

On the international stage, Berlusconi was notorious for gaffes. On one occasion, he described Obama as young, handsome, and tanned. On another he told a German lawmaker hed make a great Nazi prison guard in a movie. At a summit of the Group of 20 nations in 2009, he startled Britains Queen Elizabeth when he shouted out to Obama after the traditional family photograph. 

Reflecting his friendship with Putin, Berlusconi backed Russias annexation of Crimea in 2014 and later wrote an op-ed in Italys biggest newspaper, Corriere della Sera, describing a boycott by western leaders of Russian celebrations as a myopic decision that signaled a lack of respect. 

Constantly seeking to project optimism, Berlusconi was fond of citing his fathers advice that you have to have the sun in your pocket. But his breezy, upbeat style appeared increasingly out of place as Italy tumbled into a debt crisis in late 2011. 

With the government scrambling to avoid an economic meltdown, he was beset by legal challenges over his relationship with Karima El Mahroug, a Moroccan dancer nicknamed Ruby the Heart-Stealer, who as a teenager attended parties at his Milan mansion. Berlusconi brushed off allegations that he had sexual intercourse with a minor, insisted he was still the man of the hour and played down the scale of Italys problems. 

Restaurants are full, it is difficult to reserve a seat on a plane, resorts during holidays are fully booked, he said at a G20 meeting in Cannes, France. We really are a strong economy. I cant see another figure on the Italian scene capable of representing Italy on the international stage. I feel obliged to stay on.

Four days later, with his parliamentary majority depleted and the countrys bond yields soaring past 7% a level that had prompted Greece, Portugal and Ireland to seek bailouts Berlusconi quit. 

From that point onward, his partys influence declined, eclipsed first by the anti-immigrant League and then by the eurosceptic Brothers of Italy. It was relegated to junior roles in government, most recently in a coalition led by Brothers of Italy founder Giorgia Meloni. 

Probes, Trials

By his own reckoning, Il Cavaliere faced more than 100 probes and trials related to tax fraud, bribery and unlawful sex, among other allegations, and spent more than 300 million in legal fees during his political career.

He repeatedly denied all the charges against him, describing himself as the most-persecuted man in history, and dismissing judges and prosecutors as communists or mentally disturbed.

After decades of acquittals, a 2013 tax fraud conviction stuck, Berlusconi lost his Senate seat and he was banned from holding public office. True to form, he still pulled off a comeback of sorts in 2022, when he was allowed to stand for office again and re-elected to parliament.

Berlusconi and his first wife, Carla Elvira DallOglio, had two children: Marina Berlusconi and Pier Silvio Berlusconi. Following a divorce, he married Veronica Lario, an actress, with whom he had three children: Barbara Berlusconi, Eleonora Berlusconi and Luigi Berlusconi. That marriage also ended in divorce. 

He lived with his girlfriend, Francesca Pascale, before starting a new relationship with Marta Fascina, a Forza Italia lawmaker who was more than 50 years his junior. In 2022, the pair exchanged rings and held a party in what Berlusconi described as a symbolic marriage. 

Over the last three years, thieves plundered billions of dollars in federal COVID-19 relief aid intended to combat the worst pandemic in a century and to stabilize an economy in free fall.

Here are some key takeaways from an Associated Press analysis of what may have been stolen or wasted.

How much was stolen?

An Associated Press analysis found that fraudsters potentially stole more than $280 billion in COVID-19 relief funding; another $123 billion was wasted or misspent. Combined, the loss represents a jarring 10% of the $4.2 trillion the U.S. government has so far disbursed in COVID-relief aid.

That number is certain to grow as investigators dig deeper into thousands of potential schemes.

There are myriad reasons for the staggering loss. Investigators and outside experts say the government, in seeking to quickly spend trillions in relief aid, conducted too little oversight during the pandemics early stages and instituted too few restrictions on applicants. In short, they say, the grift was just way too easy.

Here was this sort of endless pot of money that anyone could access, said Dan Fruchter, chief of the fraud and white-collar crime unit at the U.S. Attorneys office in the Eastern District of Washington. Folks kind of fooled themselves into thinking that it was a socially acceptable thing to do, even though it wasnt legal.

The U.S. government has charged more than 2,230 defendants with pandemic-related fraud crimes and is conducting thousands of investigations.

The pilfering was wide but not always as deep as the eye-catching headlines about cases involving many millions of dollars. But all of the theft, big and small, illustrate an epidemic of scams and swindles at a time America was grappling with overrun hospitals, school closures and shuttered businesses. Since the pandemic began in early 2020, more than 1.13 million people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Where did scam artists get the money?

Before leaving office, former President Donald Trump approved emergency aid measures totaling $3.2 trillion, according to figures from the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee. President Joe Bidens 2021 American Rescue Plan authorized the spending of another $1.9 trillion. About a fifth of the $5.2 trillion has yet to be fully paid out, according to the committees most recent accounting.

Never has so much federal emergency aid been injected into the U.S. economy so quickly. The largest rescue package in American history, U.S. Comptroller General Gene Dodaro told Congress.

What agencies were hit the hardest?

The health crisis thrust the Small Business Administration, an agency that typically gets little attention, into an unprecedented role. In the seven decades before the pandemic struck, for example, the SBA had doled out $67 billion in disaster loans.

When the pandemic struck, the agency was assigned to manage two massive relief efforts the COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan and Paycheck Protection programs, which would swell to more than a trillion dollars. SBAs workforce had to get money out the door, fast, to help struggling businesses and their employees. COVID-19 pushed SBAs pace from a walk into an Olympic sprint. Between March 2020 and the end of July 2020, the agency granted 3.2 million COVID-19 economic injury disaster loans totaling $169 billion, according to an SBA inspector generals report, while at the same time implementing the huge new Paycheck Protection Program.

In the haste, guardrails to protect federal money were dropped. Prospective borrowers were allowed to self-certify that their loan applications were true. The CARES Act also barred SBA from looking at tax return transcripts that could have weeded out shady or undeserving applicants, a decision eventually reversed at the end of 2020.

If you open up the bank window and say, give me your application and just promise me you really are who you say you are, you attract a lot of fraudsters and thats what happened here, said Michael Horowitz, the U.S. Justice Department inspector general who chairs the federal Pandemic Response Accountability Committee.

What could the U.S. government have done better to combat fraud?

Horowitz criticized the governments failure early on to use the Do Not Pay Treasury Department database, designed to keep government money from going to debarred contractors, fugitives, felons or people convicted of tax fraud. Those reviews, he said, could have been done quickly.

Its a false narrative that has been set out, that there are only two choices, Horowitz said. One choice is, get the money out right away. And that the only other choice was to spend weeks and months trying to figure out who was entitled to it.

In less than a few days, a week at most, Horowitz said, SBA might have discovered thousands of ineligible applicants.

24 hours? 48 hours? Would that really have upended the program? Horowitz said. I dont think it would have. And it was data sitting there. It didnt get checked.

Who is to blame?

On politically divided Capitol Hill, lawmakers have not put the pandemic behind them and are engaged in a fierce debate over the success of the relief spending and whos to blame for the theft.

Too much government money, Republicans argue, breeds fraud, waste and inflation. Democrats have countered that all the financial muscle from Washington saved lives, businesses and jobs.

Republicans and Democrats did, however, did find common ground last year on bills to year to give the federal government more time to catch fraudsters. Biden in August signed legislation to increase the statute of limitations from five to 10 years on crimes involving the two major programs managed by the SBA.

The extra time will help federal prosecutors untangle pandemic fraud cases, which often involve identity theft and crooks overseas. But theres no guarantee theyll catch everyone who jumped at the chance for an easy payday. Theyre busy, too, with crimes unrelated to pandemic relief funds.

Gene Sperling, the White House American Rescue Plan coordinator, said any future crisis that requires government intervention doesnt have to be a choice between helping people in need and stopping fraudsters.

The prevention strategy going forward is that in a crisis, you can focus on fast delivery to people in desperate situations without feeling that you can only get that speed by taking down common sense anti-fraud guardrails, he said.