On a day when a stubbornly high inflation rate threw cold water on everyone's hope for a soft landing for the US economy, former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers assured CRE executives that "if the car's going faster, we need a stronger brake, but that doesn't mean we'll hit the wall before the car stops."

In a wide-ranging online discussion hosted by Marcus & Millichap CEO Hessam Nadji on Tuesday, Summers predicted that continued rate increases by the Fed soon will create a "recession of choice" that will bring the unprecedented job growth of the past year to a halt.

"We have incessant inflation due to a collision between demand and supply, and the Fed intends to contain it by restricting demand by raising rates," Summers said. "My best guess is that the economy will go into recession and we'll have a year of contraction of job growth."