James Grant of Grant's Interest Rate Observer on 10.30
Yikes. This is the first non-idiot* I've found who is promoting an optimistic scenario in the medium term (2-4 quarters out) - admittedly on opinion only, but presumably (not obviously) backed up with data. Presuming further, the data backing the prediction is provided in Grants IRO, which I don't have a subscription to. Anyone care to provide the data?
The only data in that direction I see is that if you believe the stock market is a general predictor of the economy six-ish months out, then with the Market up a bunch recently, Grant is right. Which means of course that all the previous Sky-Has-Fallen posts in this blog are wrong, I am wrong, and we should all embrace the rally.
Otherwise, I don't know of any data which would support his scenario. The main economic data in our face right now is unemployment, which, based on a number of previous posts in this space, indicates that there will be no GDP recovery for a long time. Even given that employment is a lagging indicator, I have found nothing at all to indicate an ability to absorb the 125,000 new entries per mo. into the US labor force, let alone begin to erase the -really - 15% un/under employment of today.
* That is, if you count Jeremy Siegel as an idiot, which one (me) might tend to do after Jeremy Grantham called Siegel's Stocks for the Long Run "dangerous". Pretty tough, Jeremy-to-Jeremy.
No comments:
Post a Comment