Investing guru Grant Cardone has taken a huge swipe at Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve — holding him responsible for the many challenges plaguing the U.S. commercial real estate market.
Cardone, who goes by the nickname Uncle G, has slammed the Fed’s aggressive series of interest rate hikes since March 2022 for causing “unnecessary” pain in the sector.
‘Overaction’ by the Fed
Historically, commercial real estate has been a “very stable” asset for investors, according to Cardone. Over 25 years, the category has outperformed the S&P 500 with average annual returns of 10.3%, according to Forbes.
Cardone believes there’s only been a few instances “over hundreds of years” where that stability has wavered: the Great Inflation of the 1970s, the crash of the dot-com bubble in 2000, the 2008 global financial crisis and “this moment right now.”
“They all have one thing in common … the credit market,” he says. “Real estate is very much tied to whether or not you can acquire debt [and] the banking system is clearly very fragile right now.”
Since March 2022, the Fed has raised interest rates 10 consecutive times — in total amounting to five percentage points — in an effort to cool the highest U.S. inflation in four decades.