… my biggest Ice Age mistake was to assume that the US would be like Japan and that subsequent to the 2008 GFC, US policymakers would find it much harder to manipulate the economic and credit cycles. I thought we would return to ‘normal’ economic cycles with lengths nearer to 40 months.
And if I was right, perceptions of increased EPS volatility would cause the equity or cyclical risk premium to rise, ie the increased volatility of the economic cycle would cause PEs to decline for any given level of bond yield.
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David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal.
He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.
