It's early morning on another seemingly monotonous weekday as the members of the board of governors, still half-awake, mechanically file in and take their seats around the huge mahogany table in the center of the dreary room. All were awakened from their slumber hours earlier to attend an emergency meeting.
Something has gone terribly wrong. Unexpectedly wrong, according to the message.
First the big central banks flood the world with unprecedented easy money and then, owing their third-rate abilities as economic fortune tellers, they've had to crank up rates faster and higher than anyone thought with debt in the developed world much greater than before the whole financial mess started. It's a portrait more dreary than the big room.
Without much imagination this could be the setting for an opening scene in economic blockbuster that's coming to a playhouse near you.
Inflation is stable so the gurus say. And there's a new normal on the interest rate horizon. Likewise for employment. Wages are flat with only the weakest of chances they'll rise significantly anytime soon. The typical boom has unsurprisingly led to the typical bust. As interest rates fell debt accumulation strolled the upward path. It's an easy equation.
Like most ointments, however, more than a few flies usually find their way there. Neither in the U. S. nor in Europe has much, if anything, been done to repair structural weaknesses. Leaders as they have in the past opt for the business as usual road. In the U.S. that's anemic savings and media-urged excessive consumption.
In the stock market front-running is supposed to be illegal. But apparently nobody has informed MSM yet. Choose your cheerleaders carefully .
Americans will consume almost anything, especially if its edible. It's the American disease and not content with it ownership, many are now trying to export it to far flung places like China. Concern about inflation in the U.S. recently took a hit when Fed Chair Janet Yellen fluffed off the risk of rising prices as just so much "noise." Still others believe that there is not enough inflation premium in U.S. bonds.
The seas are currently calm. Complacency seems to be spreading faster than a bad case of tina pedis in July. Bears are growling, bulls howling about the possibility of a long-term ride with some even suggesting an S & P 500 that could hit 4,200 in 10 years. Both sides daily roll out reams of data to support their case. Meanwhile, with few exceptions, just about every investment from bonds to commodities to equities to gold are so far up on the year.
To date foreigners have expressed a huge hunger for U.S. Treasury bonds, partly owing to the safe haven aura. If the Chinese catch the American disease that could lessen their appetite for that widely hawked American dish.
So who is correct? Who is to say? But one things remain sure: You're guess is just about as good as the next guy's.
To the see what the next act entails, however, most of us will just have to exercise another attribute not very common in America, patience.
In the meantime, we'd love to know your guess.
