inflation, rather than help student-loan borrowers deal with it. But the total amount of monthly loan repayments that are being deferred is, in the grand scheme of things, small , and not all of that money will be spent, so it’s unlikely the deferral will have much of an impact on inflation at all.
Then there’s omicron. This new variant isn’t going to put us back in March 2020 — or even January 2021 — mode, particularly emerging evidence suggests it may well be milder than earlier variants, and vaccines and new therapeutics are going to blunt its impact. But already in the process of infecting millions of people, many of whom are going to miss work as a result. And we still don’t know if Omicron will have any impact on people’s willingness to do things like eating out.