Name: You Can't 'Jawbone' Down Energy Prices, Rubenstein Says
Uploaded: 2026-03-12T21:35:18.000Z
Duration: 4 min 38 s
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Past simple

You left the one in the 70s down in Washington D.C. what's your assessment of this one?

Future simple

Well, it's still a little early to say exactly what the long term impact is going to be.

The CPI numbers that came out today were comforting, but

they don't really take into account what the likely impact is going to be over the next couple of weeks on inflation because of the energy price increases we're now seeing or likely to see.

But I think the market is probably going to be pleased with the numbers from the cpi, but

it won't really affect the Fed all that much because I think the Fed is probably going to say that we have to look at what the energy prices are doing over the next couple of days before it makes a decision.

My guess is that probably you won't see any, any rate cuts.

I think the markets are suggesting there will be no rate cuts this time and that think that's likely to be the case because again, energy prices are probably going up a little bit more than the CPI numbers suggest today.

So, David, the administration is doing its best to put a lead in cap energy prices.

We've seen the PR campaign over the past few days.

Clearly though, this is a real energy shock that we're all grappling with.

I wonder how you're framing the difference at the moment between how equity markets and equity investors perceive this moment and the way that these strategists on the ground and the facts are playing out.

How stark is the contrast between the two?

Well, obviously any administration wants to keep energy prices low.

And when I worked in government we wanted to keep energy prices low.

But if there's any part of the world's economy that is not subject completely to what the US wants its energy prices.

Because energy prices are determined as much by things outside the United States as by in the United States.

And today we still import a fair amount of oil even though we produce a lot of oil, we export oil, we still import oil and most of the developed world still imports oil or natural gas.

So I think the impact is likely to be not positive for the markets because I think people are going to be nervous that unless we the war has ended relatively soon and the energy prices stabilize, there will be some impact.

We just don't know how long the war will go on.

And no one really can say for sure how long that will go on or how long the Russia Ukraine war will go on.

But clearly market leaders are nervous about a war that's going to go on too long.

You worked in the White House under the Carter administration.

What do you expect this Donald Trump administration to do to mediate consumers concerns, especially in a midterm election year?

Well, that was a long time ago and the world's changed a fair bit.

But I would say that generally trying to jawbone down energy prices doesn't often work.

Telling people they should not worry about it doesn't often work.

I think really the test is whether the war is going to be ended in the relatively near future, because that's going to have the biggest impact.

If the Straits of Hormuz are blocked for some time, that's going to have a big impact.

So I would recommend that anybody in government, they, they should recognize that you can't just jawbone down energy prices.

Obviously, we all are supportive of, of the effort to get the war over with as soon as possible.

But it takes some time and it takes at least two parties to come to an agreement.

And right now I'm not sure there's any negotiations going on.

Hopefully something will resolve itself relatively soon though.

David, if we weren't talking about oil prices, we'd be talking about JP Morgan marking down some private loans tied to software companies and this question of cockroaches and other questions that have emerged from private credit.

I just wonder if you do get a Fed on hold and you, you do get more funding stress, how much that accelerates.

A story that has been evolving in the private credit sphere of stress particularly tied to software.

Well, private credit is in relatively good shape.

Remember, there are enormous amounts of loans in private credit and relatively small percentage of them have had any default issues.

Only a few of them have had issues and as a result, they've gotten a lot of attention.

But generally from the portfolios that I've seen in our firm and other places, I don't really think there's a big problem right now in private credit default ratios or things like that.

Clearly though, if the economy slows down and you go into a recession, I'm not saying we would, but

whenever you have a recession, all aspects of an economy are not going to be pretty.

So our private credit would be affected by that.

But at the moment where we're not predicting, and

I'm not predicting a recession, I think the private credit is probably had a little bit more attention than probably deserves.

I don't think the private credit portfolios of most of the firms are really in trouble.