Most readers remember the pre-recession days of 4% GDP growth, interest rates at levels where savers had return choices worth pursuing (e.g., the 10 year T-Note at 4%), and workers could count on annual real wage growth. Today, many refer to this as “normal,” and there is a desire, if not a movement, to return the economy back to such a state. You can see this in the political arena. …Read More
Dealing with the ‘New Normal’
In ’09 and ’10, when Mohammed El-Erian and Bill Gross both worked at PIMCO, they put forth a concept they called “the New Normal.” It postulated that the economy would grow at a much slower rate than it had in the past, and therefore market returns – both equity and fixed income – would be much lower than what we had experienced in the post-WWII era. Nice theory, many thought; …Read More
An approaching financial crisis — reality or myth?
The data seen so far in Q2 are somewhat better than Q1, and Q1’s real GDP growth has been upgraded from a miserable 0.5 percent to a miserly 0.8 percent. The U.S. economy remains in first gear, mainly due to the oil patch and continued sluggish manufacturing activity. With such poor results from a record-breaking level of deficit spending for the last decade, it isn’t any wonder that the purveyors …Read More
