Brexit will impose a headwind on the economy, but the U.S. will not suffer a crisis as a result, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew reassured the country Monday morning.
“There’s no sense of a financial crisis developing,” Lew said in an interview on CNBC.
Lew acknowledged massive movements in foreign exchange markets and in stocks and bonds as a result of the U.K. vote to leave the EU, but maintained that “it’s been an orderly impact so far.”
“This is an additional headwind, but I think it is something we can manage through, and Europe and the U.K. can manage through,” Lew said.
Lew and other policymakers will be looking to boost the confidence of U.S. investors this week after stocks fell more than 3 percent and the dollar soared on Friday in the wake of the vote.
The concern in the administration and at the Federal Reserve leading into the vote was that there could be a self-fulfilling market panic.
Lew said banks in the U.S. and in the EU were better capitalized and prepared to withstand the stresses created by turbulent markets.
President Obama and his administration had pushed hard for the U.K. to stay in the EU. Lew chalked up the vote to anxiety on the part of working-class people who have not seen their incomes rise even as the economy has recovered. “We have to correct some of the inequities that have made it a better economy for the people at the top” than for working-class people, he said.
