“The economy hasn’t lost its mojo.” MarketWatch

 Financial FAQs

“Advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for June 2026, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $768.6 billion, up 0.2 percent (±0.4 percent)* from the previous month, and up 6.7 percent (±0.5 percent) from June 2025.” Census.gov

FREDretailsales

Headlines, such as that consumers “haven’t lost their mojo” have popped up when retail sales rose 0.2 percent in June. It’s a sign of consumers are willing to ‘shop until they drop’, which may keep the U.S. economy growing for some time.

It also means that same level of irrational exuberance of the 1990s is back once again, with the major market indexes at record levels, and consumers seemingly oblivious to the conditions that prevailed during the late 1990s.

 Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller first presented the term irrational exuberance to Alan Greenspan’s Federal Reserve Governors in 1996 to evidence how overvalued stock market levels had become at the time. But it wasn’t until 2000 that the dot-com asset bubble burst that many market commentators and some economists are comparing to the current record market rally.

The MarketWatch headline portrays most of the media’s reaction to the latest Advance Retail and Food sales report by the U.S. Census Bureau. The slightly hysterical headline is really a sign of relief because of the slight drop in monthly gas prices that prevailed during the 60-day cease fire agreement.

But the cease fire has ended. And it reveals how badly the Trump tariffs and Iran war have hurt consumer spending, still the backbone of U.S. economic growth. We have been a consumer-driven economy since the 1950s and end of World War II.

And since retail sales are not inflation adjusted, when adjusted for inflation, gas and food in particular have become less affordable. Retail inflation is still above 3 percent. Retail sales have fluctuated wildly, as per the above graph, rising 6.7 percent in 12 months because consumer bought more in earlier months to get ahead of the rising inflation—i.e., before the Iran War began to jack up everyday prices.

Though sales at car dealers and online merchants both jumped about 2 percent in June, sales fell at grocery, clothing and healthcare stores, says MarketWatch.

So, consumers are still shopping because they must, putting them further in debt. The Consumer Price Index for basic necessities like gas and food is still above 3 percent, as I said, and the wholesale (PPI) price index for raw materials that go into retail goods is 5.5 percent annually, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. It’s still the largest rise in more than three years.

We don’t have to look at just the dot-com bubble to compare, either. I see an unsettling resemblance to the ‘roaring twenties’ of an earlier era from the recovery of another pandemic, the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1919 to 1920 that killed what would be millions of Americans if at our current population level.

It was a long recovery—until 1929 and the Black Friday stock market crash that led to the Great Depression, caused in part by another era of high tariffs that led to product shortages.

How long may this era of irrational exuberance last that has driven the financial markets to record levels with so much wealth pouring into a new space age that will take us years to return to the moon, much less turn a profit?

We are at another turning point in what currently looks like an A.I. revolution, much like the Internet’s introduction that took decades to adopt, and recovered from a Great Recession, let’s not forget.

So the best way to survive another bout of irrational exuberance is to be patient, in my opinion, rather than listen to the crowd that promises the next big thing.

Harlan Green © 2026

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Irrational Exuberance is Back

 Financial FAQs

“How errors of human judgment can infect even the smartest people, thanks to overconfidence, lack of attention to details, and excessive trust in the judgments of others, stemming from a failure to understand that others are not making independent judgments but are themselves following still others—the blind leading the blind.” Robert Shiller, Irrational Exuberance

FREDS&P

Both the DOW and S&P 500 indexes of the largest publicly traded companies in the U.S. are at record levels, despite Donald Trump having just raised tariffs on 90 countries that he doesn’t like for some reason. April 2 was the last time he made such an announcement and the S&P plunged 828 pts. on the same day (see dip in graph), and the DOW more than 1,000 pts. before resuming their climb.

Yet the financial markets aren’t panicking this time, maybe for the wrong reasons. Their over enthusiasm, which was first termed irrational exuberance by Fed Chair Alan Greenspan in the mid-1990s as a warning that stocks were overpriced, has created a new asset bubble much like the dot-com asset bubble, and housing bubble that led to the Great Recession.

And such massive overinvestment in new technologies such as the current AI investment boom haven’t turned out well, historically.

Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller first wrote about it in his 2000 book, Irrational Exuberance, just before the bursting of the dot-com speculative bubble, which was precipitated by overinvestment in communication technologies such as the nationwide laying of fiber optic cables.

He said at the time: “I define a speculative bubble as a situation in which news of price increases spurs investor enthusiasm, which spreads by psychological contagion from person to person, in the process amplifying stories that might justify the price increases, and bringing in a larger and larger class of investors who, despite doubts about the real value of an investment, are drawn to it partly by envy of others' successes and partly through a gamblers' excitement.^”

Companies are investing $trillions in developing AI, which is powering the largest Magnificent 7 tech stocks such as Apple and Facebook to record highs. Market analysts on CNBC have noted that ten stocks are driving 40 percent of the market’s current rally.

Yet just 9.4% of U.S. businesses used AI in July, including machine learning, natural language processing, virtual agents, and voice recognition, according to the Census Bureau as cited by Barron’s Megan Leonhardt.

S&P members’ current earnings per share reflect this. Stock prices have climbed to 29 times earnings which, according to Professor Shiller’s research, is approaching irrational exuberance territory. This is double the S&P’s historical EPS average price of 15 times earnings over the past 100 years that Dr. Shiller has researched.

The markets seem to be ignoring Trump’s erratic behavior for other reasons as well. This is in part because of investors’ belief that inflation is mild, though still rising. The Fed’s favored PCE inflation index for June increased 2.6 percent. Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 2.8 percent from one year ago, still above the Federal Reserve target inflation rate.

And the long-awaited interest rate cuts financial markets haven been hoping for could begin in September after the very weak July unemployment report that caused Trump to fire the BLS Director.

The markets are also ignoring the damage Trump’s higher tariffs will cause to economic growth. History has shown that stagflation is a recurring problem, even during the COVID-19 pandemic. Supply chains dried up then as the world economies shut down, elevating inflation. And supply deliveries have already slowed from the effects of Trump’s on-again, off-again executive orders, as countries look for ways to reroute their exports.

Maybe the greatest sign of irrational exuberance is investors’ assumption that TACO Trump will eventually settle tariffs back to the 10 to 15 percent rates that he initially promised. But when?

Trump and Republicans have always had a problem with the truth and economic facts (like who benefits most from tax cuts), as has been pointed out by those professionals whose job it is to ascertain the facts (with many losing their jobs because of it).

Irrational exuberance has seriously damaged financial markets in the past and caused $trillions in losses. It happens when investors ignore financial facts that aren’t convenient or follow the herd rather than make the effort to read below the headlines.

What will happen this time when market investors realize this administration doesn’t believe in the facts at all?

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Why Is Inflation Still a Problem?

 Financial FAQs

The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, Personal Consumption Expenditures Index (PCE) isn’t declining because consumers continue to spend more than they earn. Why?

BEA.gov

Such spending gave a boost to retail sales and so made holiday shoppers happier. But it also highlighted the underlying problem, inflation is still too high.

The June to December BEA graph shows the difference between income (blue bar) and spending, or outlays (orange bar). It has been this way for at least one year. The declining black line in the graph measures consumers’ personal savings rate, which is back down to 3.8 percent from almost 5 percent in June 2024 because of it.

Why do consumers keep spending more than they make? One clue is that most of the spending is for housing, utilities, transportation and gasoline—necessities. It must be that consumers are not earning enough to keep up with rising prices for their basic needs.

But it also shows a bit if irrational exuberance—a form of excessive optimism that former Fed Chair Greenspan warned about in the ‘90s—and is happening in the financial markets today, which are at record highs.

“The numbers look good. Maybe even surprisingly good—and that’s not a word I throw around willy nilly,” said Barron’s Magazine’s Jack Hough recently about the financial markets.

Stubborn inflation tells us why it became the backbreaker for Democrats in this election cycle. It confirms the most basic of economic laws—the Law of Supply and Demand. The American economy as well as imports are not supplying enough goods and services to satisfy the demand for them.

Most of the inflation surge was in the service sector, as I said, and consumers want more and better services most of all. Hence personal expenditures (blue line in second graph) is hovering around 2.8 percent—too high for the Fed that wants 2 percent inflation.

Inflation in the Fed’s PCE price index for December increased 2.6 percent in one year. Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 2.8 percent from one year ago.

This picture tells us the real problem—the slow recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic isn’t producing enough. World supply has not caught up with the world demand for goods and services. It is also due to so much geopolitical unrest, including the Mideast and Ukraine conflicts.

And the Trump administration wants to deport those undocumented immigrants that mostly work in the services industries, which means more worker shortages; as well as raise tariffs on many countries, which could cut GDP growth by some 1 percent, according to the Peterson Institute, a non-partisan research organization.

It will make everything that American consumers want even more expensive. And that might keep the Federal Reserve from dropping interest rates further, as they hinted in their just concluded January FOMC meeting. How about that?

There was also some good news. The U.S. economy grew at a mild 2.3% annual pace in the final three months of 2024, and the details of the report showed an economy on strong footing that was being handed over to the Trump administration. GDP grew at 3% and 3.1% in the two prior quarters.

It’s still not a good time for excessive optimism, in my opinion.

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Who Wants to Know?

 Financial FAQs

“Fewer than a quarter of Americans (23%) currently rate the country’s economic conditions as excellent or good, while 36% say they are poor and about four-in-ten (41%) view conditions as “only fair,” PEW Research

PEWResearch

Why do so many Americans doubt the strength of the American economy that is the fastest growing in the developed world since the COVID-19 pandemic? It depends on their politial leanings, according to the latest PEW Research poll.

PEW Research has been measuring political attitudess for decades. As many as 81 percent of Republicans had positive views of the nation’s economy during Trump’s first presidency, whereas a higher percentage of Democrats were positive during President Biden’s term, per the PEW graph.

It is a condemnation of the lack of economic literacy among American voters, and I maintain largely a reflection of its lack in our educational system.

This is also a reflection of the fact that economic science is still in its infancy. In fact, Adam Smith, who wrote the first treatise on economic theory, The Wealth of Nations, was a Scottish Professor of Moral Philosophy who was the first to show that a successful economy was based on its citizenry guided by an invisible hand to make the right moral choices (honesty, good character).

And economies went awry when those in charge didn’t follow the rules of good character, which have always been autocratic rulers out to serve themselves rather than their citizens, such as in China and Russia. And why is that possible?

A large fraction of voters do suffer from economic illiteracy. Indeed, it is fair to say that an ample majority do not understand the basics of how markets work. They are especially confused about labor and international markets. Voters also have severe misconceptions about how government spends their tax dollars, and are extraordinarily pessimistic about long-run economic conditions,” says Professor Bryan Caplan of George Mason University, citing a recent Washington Post/ Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation/ Harvard University Survey Project.

Most voters lack even an elementary understanding of economics. When prices change, vague conspiracy theories - not supply-and-demand - are their default explanation, says Professor Caplan.

One survey item that captured the public's anti-market bias is the question asking why the price of gasoline rose back in 1996. Is the reason the "normal law of supply and demand," or is it instead "oil companies trying to increase profits"? An overwhelming majority of economists - 89% - point to supply and demand. An almost equally lopsided fraction of the public - 74% - say the opposite.

Why so much ignorance of financial markets and basic economic conditions that everyone should know to make accurate decisions about their financial future? An economic education was not a high priority for Americans during more prosperous times, a time of a growing middle class after the Great Depression and World War Two.

According to the Council for Economic Education’s latest biennial Survey of the States, a nonpartisan education organisation, just 28 states required K-12 students to take an economics course to graduate, until the COVID-19 pandemic and world-side economic shutdown.

But since the pandemic more than two-thirds of all states are now requiring personal finance classes for high school graduation.

The 2024 Survey found that 35 states now require students to take a course in personal finance to graduate. The new regulations in those dozen states will lead to over 10 million additional K–12 students – 21 percent of current students – gaining guaranteed access to this knowledge, the Survey notes.

The picture isn’t much better in higher education. Only 3.3 percent of colleges required students to take a basic economics course, according to a 2014 study by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, titled "What Will They Learn?"

ACTA looked at 1,098 colleges and universities. The organization found 3.3 percent require an economics class, 18.3 percent require a U.S. government or history class, and 37 percent make students take a literature course.

There is one additional reason for Americans’ economic illiteracy. It is the well-studied phenomena of herd behavior that was called irrational exuberance by former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan in an earlier decade.

Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller attributed it to a mental laziness that caused the housing bubble. People tend to listen to hearsay and word of mouth rather than rely on their own judgements to make financial decisions.

“It was, and is, about how errors of human judgment can infect even the smartest people, thanks to overconfidence, lack of attention to details, and excessive trust in the judgments of others, stemming from a failure to understand that others are not making independent judgments but are themselves following still others—the blind leading the blind,” said Dr. Shiller.

It is a sorry picture of our economic illiteracy, and the reason so many citizens are easily fooled by leaders without the requisite character traits, such as good morals and character, that Adam Smith said were required to run a successful economy and government that is for all the people.

Harlan Green © 2024

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Are Consumers Confused?

 The Mortgage Corner

What are we to make of the Conference Board’s latest confidence survey?

"The decline in confidence between May and June was centered on consumers aged 35-54. By contrast, those under 35 and those 55 and older saw confidence improve this month,” said Dana M. Peterson, Chief Economist at The Conference Board.

Conference Board

We are in the midst of one of the greatest economic recoveries in history—from the worst pandemic in more than 100 years. Yet most consumers lack confidence because they don’t know where to look for information on the real economy, as opposed to what is on social media or in mass media headlines.

“Confidence pulled back in June but remained within the same narrow range that’s held throughout the past two years, as strength in current labor market views continued to outweigh concerns about the future. However, if material weaknesses in the labor market appear, confidence could weaken as the year progresses,” said Peterson.

I believe this reflects the fact that most consumers like their current circumstances, but not outside events that may forecast the future. Why isn’t the rest of the world doing as well as Americans, say the headlines?

A lot of the confusion unfortunately comes from social media which doesn’t differentiate fact from fiction. A recent poll maintained that 50 percent of those surveyed believe we are in a recession, when real GDP growth has averaged 2 percent since the pandemic, and we are at full employment.

It reflects what I have called irrational pessimism. The other side of the coin is irrational exuberance, when excessive optimism that prices will almost always rise can cause asset bubbles.

Nobel laureate economist Robert Shiller has written about it. That’s because most market investors rely on hearsay and word of mouth, rather than research that would paint a more accurate view of market conditions.

Much of Main Street, ordinary working adults in the main, have become irrationally pessimistic for that reason. Surveys such as a recent poll by PEW Research show this.

“About three-in-ten Americans (28%) currently rate national economic conditions as excellent or good, while a similar share (31%) say they are poor and about four-in-ten (41%) view them as “only fair.”

I also believe most Americans are emotionally exhausted and still recovering from the pandemic, so they are now spending less which is slowing economic growth.

BEA.gov/CRFB

That is reflected in the major inflation indexes which were all flat in May. The Fed’s preferred Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) monthly inflation index didn’t rise at all on Friday in line with retail CPI prices (in blue line) reported earlier this month as seen in above graph.

When will consumers begin to realize this? Maybe in September when the Fed is now predicted to begin to lower their interest rates. That should make all of US happier!

Harlan Green © 2024

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Irrational Exuberance vs. Irrational Pessimism?

 Popular Economics Weekly

I don’t believe Wall Street investors are irrationally exuberant at present, contrary to those that say we are now in a stock market bubble with the record level S&P and DOW indexes.

It’s as easy to be irrationally pessimistic about the future as are many Main Streeters that don’t feel so good about themselves or the US economy.

The indexes are high because corporations show record profits, in part thanks to the $trillions in pandemic aid, but also because of the excessive profit-taking by major retailers that took advantage of the product shortages caused by the COVID pandemic shutdowns, which has been confirmed by the FTC.

Large grocery store chains exploited product shortages during the pandemic by raising prices significantly more than needed to cover their added costs and they continue to reap excessive profits, according to a Federal Trade Commission report.

Much of Main Street, ordinary working adults in the main, have become the opposite, irrationally pessimistic, in my opinion. Surveys such as a recent PEW Research survey I highlighted last week show this is so.

In a poll by PEW Research, “About three-in-ten Americans (28%) currently rate national economic conditions as excellent or good, while a similar share (31%) say they are poor and about four-in-ten (41%) view them as “only fair.”

PEW

Why such divergent opinions when we are fully employed and have surging economic growth? The most recent Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence survey helps to explain it.

Right and left wing partisans are now controlling the debate. Middle-income Americans, which are most working Americans, are exhausted and pay little attention to economic data, which is difficult to understand even by economists.

Most consumers remain concerned about high inflation, the contentious budget debate, and partisan bickering of the Presidential election campaign.

“Consumers remained concerned with elevated price levels, which predominated write-in responses, said Dana Peterson, its Chief Economist. “March’s write-in responses showed an uptick in concerns about food and gas prices, but in general complaints about gas prices have been trending downward. Indeed, average 12-month inflation expectations came in at 5.3 percent—barely changed from February’s four-year low of 5.2 percent.”

“Recession fears continued to trend downward both in write-in responses and as measured by consumers’ Perceived Likelihood of a US Recession over the Next 12 Months,” he continued. “Meanwhile, consumers expressed more concern about the US political environment compared to prior months.”

The PEW survey chart above shows the tug-of-war between extreme right and left political factions controlling the debate, while 41% of the Americans surveyed viewed economic conditions as “only fair”.

Why? Most Americans are exhausted and still recovering from the pandemic. There is a divergence between those experiencing irrational exuberance vs. irrational pessimism because most of those polled aren’t as knowledgeable about real economic data and business cycles that are published by the government and private providers. So they must rely on their immediate experience; much of it due to the trauma caused by the COVID pandemic that killed one million Americans.

PEW said, however, expectations for future economic conditions are more positive than they were last spring: Today, roughly a quarter say that they expect economic conditions will be better a year from now (26%) – up from 17% in April 2023.

There is hope, in other words, because of a resurgent US economy, the strongest economy in the world, that they will eventually realize their jobs are safe and secure in such an environment.

Harlan Green © 2024

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Why the Irrational Pessimism?

 Financial FAQs

Public polls seem to be saying one thing, economic facts another. Real Clear Politics compendium of 11 opinion polls on whether participants approve or disapprove of President Biden’s handling of the economy show a negative -22.5 percent spread.

Yet we have had the unemployment rate below 4 percent for two years, current inflation is hovering at 2.5 percent and still declining, and consumers continue in record numbers to travel and enjoy leisure activities.

FREDunemployment

Household wealth has also increased 37 percent since 2019, per the New York Fed, the minimum wage has risen to the mid-teens in most states (except a few red states), and there is a labor shortage with nine million job vacancies that has resulted in record wage increases in multiple industries.

Why the disconnect between economic reality and public opinions? Could it be poll takers are asking the wrong questions, like are you better off today than during the pandemic?

Most of the respondents say they are personally better off, but the economy isn’t improving. How can that be?

I maintain it is what I call the Irrational Pessimism of investors, which are most Americans that respond to said polls. It is the opposite of what Nobelist Robert Shiller has called Irrational Exuberance, but for the same reasons.

Yale Professor Shiller is one of the founders of behavioral finance and author of many books that won him the Nobel Prize in 2013. His research has said that most people act irrationally when making financial decisions. Such decisions are mainly based on hearsay, rumors, and plain old irrational exuberance.

For example, the housing bubble was caused by the public’s belief that housing prices only rose but never fell since they hadn’t fallen for decades, said Shiller.

Professor Shiller has written about it in successive editions of his book, Irrational Exuberance. And former Fed Chair Greenspan first brought such behavior to the world’s attention before the 2000 Dot-com recession, as I said recently.

So why would not the public behave irrationally having just weathered the worst pandemic in 100 years—that is, being irrationally pessimistic in the face of so much financial trauma?

His research and that of other Neo-Keynesian (those who essentially believe that government is needed to maintain a healthy economy, as happened with FDR’s New Deal) show that most financial decisions aren’t based on the careful search of facts, but mental laziness, even in the housing market.

It has essentially refuted those economists who believed since the 1970s that financial markets behaved rationally—i.e., that investors carefully thought through their financial decisions, hence unregulated, free markets were the surest way to prosperity.

That didn’t prove the case, of course, as the six recessions since 1980, including the Great Recession, have proven.

So, in fact, poll respondents may not be thinking of their own personal well-being in these polls. They tend to act more rationally when the personal stakes are highest.

But understanding complex markets is another matter, and one that takes more time and effort. Perhaps by November and presidential election time rolls around, the American public will take the economic consequences of their decisions more seriously, and not leave it to hearsay, word-of-mouth and irrational pessimism. Let us hope so.

Harlan Green © 2024

Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Employment Rise is Big Surprise!

Financial FAQs

MarketWatch.com

What happened? American workers are suddenly going back on the job; at least 2.5 million of them, according to the Labor Department. That knocks down the number of unemployed to maybe 20 million, and surprised economists.

A private payroll survey (ADP) that precedes the government’s had said on Thursday their estimate of -2.8 million jobs lost had caused them to lower their guess for the official BLS number (on Friday) to the -4 million to -5 million range, versus an earlier forecast of -8 million. 

“These improvements in the labor market reflected a limited resumption of economic activity that had been curtailed in March and April due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and efforts to contain it,” said the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). “In May, employment rose sharply in leisure and hospitality, construction, education and health services, and retail trade. By contrast, employment in government continued to decline sharply.”

In fact, American businesses have been going back to work for more than one month, especially in the airline, automobile, leisure and hospitality industries, per the BLS.

American Airlines said Thursday that it expects to fly in July about 55 percent of the domestic capacity that was flown during July 2019, as load factor improved 55 percent at the end of May from 15 percent for the month of April.

“We’re seeing a slow but steady rise in domestic demand,” said Vasu Raja, senior vice president of network strategy. “After a careful review of data, we’ve built a July schedule to match.”

Airline travel has picked up substantially, in other words. On Wednesday, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said daily flights increased by 30 percent between April 21 and May 27. The IATA said the improvement in the data suggests “the industry has seen the bottom of the crisis, provided there is no recurrence.”

And tens of thousands of autoworkers started streaming back into car and truck plants across the South and Midwest in May, “a critical step toward bringing the nation’s largest manufacturing industry back to life,” according to the NYTimes.

Ford, General Motors, and Fiat Chrysler restarted, after Toyota, Honda and Tesla began reopening plants. Hyundai restarted a plant in Alabama on May 4, according to the NYTimes.

The manufacturing sector lost 1.32 million jobs in April, but gained 225,000 jobs back in May. The so-called underemployment rate that includes part timers and those who have stopped looking for a job recently fell to 21.2 percent from 22.8 percent in April. But it was just 7 percent in February, so the latest payroll numbers are nothing to crow about.

Cities such as Detroit have also announced that hundreds of its employees are returning to work. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan revealed to Detroit Regional Chamber President and CEO Sandy K. Baruah that the city is preparing “to send hundreds back to work in areas like cutting grass, road work, and construction.”

The DOW Jones is up more than 900 at this writing, and S&P 500 up more than 90 points on the surprise news. It looks like many companies called back their workers at the earliest opportunity with either emails or texts after two months of layoffs, thus escaping the notice of statisticians.

Is this improvement just a blip, as COVID-19 infection rates continue to climb in most of the country? We have to assume this will continue as more of the economy opens this summer, and demonstrations against police brutality continue.

Any real improvements will also depend on how returning workers are treated at their job places. Will they follow CDC guidelines of workers safety with appropriate disinfection protocols, including the continued wearing of masks and social-distancing?

Today’s financial market euphoria smacks of an irrational exuberance based in the belief that further disruptions due to the pandemic and street protests will  not last long, when it's better to act rationally in such times.

Harlan Green © 2020

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Can We Expect More Than One Pandemic?

Popular Economics Weekly

Wrightson/ICAP

Yes, says behavioral economist Robert Shiller, who won his Nobel prize for the study of human behavior in financial markets. Why? Financial market investors are panicking because of the COVID-19 pandemic, for starters, which could affect the general public’s financial behavior as well, and so wreak even more damage to crashing financial markets.

“We are feeling the anxiety effects of not one pandemic but two,” said Dr. Shiller in a recent Project-Syndicate article. “First, there is the COVID-19 pandemic, which makes us anxious because we, or people we love, anywhere in the world, might soon become gravely ill and even die. And, second, there is a pandemic of anxiety about the economic consequences of the first.”

The first indication of a looming loss of confidence in the economy and jobs is showing up in consumer sentiment surveys, per Wrightson’s above graph. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index fell by 12 percent in March. 
The Conference Board’s confidence survey fell as well.

“Consumer confidence declined sharply in March due to a deterioration in the short-term outlook,” said Lynn Franco, Senior Director of Economic Indicators at The Conference Board. “The Present Situation Index remained relatively strong, reflective of an economy that was on solid footing, and prior to the recent surge in unemployment claims. However, the intensification of COVID-19 and extreme volatility in the financial markets have increased uncertainty about the outlook for the economy and jobs. March’s decline in confidence is more in line with a severe contraction – rather than a temporary shock – and further declines are sure to follow.”

Dr. Shiller knows a lot about human behavior, and the irrational behavior of financial market investors. He wrote about irrational exuberance in his best-seller of that name in 2000, just as the Dot-com bubble burst from overinvestment building the digital infrastructure (remember all those fiber-optic cable networks being laid?).

And the Great Recession was caused by the busted housing bubble—due to home buyers bidding up housing prices to stratospheric heights because of the popular thought that housing prices could never decline—another example of irrational exuberance.

Now what about its opposite—irrational pessimism, or a contagion of fear that stock prices have no visible bottom; or a cure or vaccine will not be found in time to save many companies from bankruptcies, due to a prolongation of social isolation and business shutdowns?

“The effects financial anxiety has on the stock market may be mediated by a phenomenon that psychologist Paul Slovic of the University of Oregon and his colleagues call the “affect heuristic,” said Shiller. “When people are emotionally upset because of a tragic event, they react with fear even in circumstances where there is no reason to fear.”

Dr. Shiller’s research has found that people tend to react to rumor, word-of-mouth, or popular media stories rather than actual facts.

In a joint paper with William Goetzmann and Dasol Kim, for example, Shiller found that people living within 30 miles of the epicenter of a substantial earthquake significantly raise their expectation that there could be a 1929- or 1987-size stock market crash.

Similar fears may have caused the plunge in market asset values today, where interest rates and Treasury bond yields have plunged to historic lows as investors flee to save haven investments in order to preserve their cash.

While many Americans might have faith in upcoming cures for COVID-19, they might not have such faith in a restoration of the economy and jobs. It took years for markets to recover from the Great Recession, even with the Fed holding their rates to almost zero.

I maintain that we will need some form of a New Deal, or even Green New Deal—prolonged market interventions by government in a word—to reassure Americans and the rest of the world that the second, anxiety pandemic can be controlled as well.

Harlan Green © 2020

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Nobelist Daniel Kahneman on Thinking, Fast and Slow

Financial FAQs

Amazon

Thinking, Fast and Slow; what else should Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman be noted for, the son of Lithuanian Jewish parents fleeing the Russian Empire in the 1920s who grew up to the sound of black boots marching during the Nazi occupation of Paris, if not the study human behavior in both wartime and peacetime?

This was the second year Dr. Kahneman came to Westmont’s annual Breakfast Lecture series that packed the Santa Barbara Hilton’s largest ballroom. I’m sure many were there because they were looking for some insight into how our species may react to the current coronavirus scare that some are characterizing as a ‘Black Swan’ event (mostly economists), meaning a very serious event with no predictable outcome.

Dr. Kahneman emphasized that our decision-making propensities come from different parts of the brain that cause us to both ‘narrow frame’ (fast process) and ‘broad frame’ (slow process) the information we take in. And we need both parts to reach a rational decision that is in our best interests.

We have a tendency, or bias, to come to a conclusion or make a decision quickly, but Dr. Kahneman says not so fast! We need the slower-thinking side of us to see the larger picture. He said it can be just a matter of closing one’s eyes for a few minutes that slows down our thought process while allowing us to process what we’ve just taken in intuitively.

We should take the time to collect all the pertinent, ‘cognitive’ facts, in order to slow down our first reaction to what is right in front of us. He used several examples of narrow vs. broad frame thinking, such as forecasting future events, or diagnosing the high rate of skin cancer among farmers.

I was particularly interested in his take on how we make economic decisions. He is at the foundation of behavioral economics, or how humans make financial decisions that are not always in our best interest; particularly if we allow so-called free, unregulated financial markets to make choices for us.

There are now at least three Noble prizes that have been awarded for information biases in how we take in information and make decisions on how to intelligently invest. And they are mostly Keynesian, or neo-Keynesian economists that believe governments must take an active role in regulating markets to prevent excessive speculation, for instance, as happened with the Dot-com bubble in 2001, or housing bubble that resulted in the Great Recession.

Nobel economist Robert J Shiller described in his best-selling book, Irrational Exuberance how many investors and homebuyers relied on rumor, hearsay, or word of mouth, rather than serious research to buy a home, or invest in the financial markets and thereby drive up asset prices (such as housing) to unsustainable levels.

Economists and Psychologists call it herd behavior when investors flock to a particular investment because others are doing the same, rather than researching the history of the company or index to see if it is overvalued.

Dr. Kahneman and his partner, Amos Twersky, found that humans have an optimistic bias in forecasting favorable outcomes that we must be aware of, when making decisions based on those forecasts. We therefore need to look at the broader picture.

How will the lowering of interest rates, as the Fed is currently doing, affect both poor and wealthy consumers, for instance? Should we save more and spend less in the event of an economic slowdown or recession?

Stocks are overvalued in this 11^th year of the current recovery just by looking at the current price-to-earnings ratio of the S&P. Why? The record profits of those corporations cannot be sustained with slower population growth and labor productivity—the two main factors that determine economic growth. Their earnings, the denominator of the P/E ratio, will therefore shrink, causing the ratio to rise above historical levels, hence certain stock assets become overvalued and will eventually fall.

That is what happened during the 2001 Dot-com stock bubble and 2007-09 Great Recession. P/E ratios soared to levels last seen before the Great Depression, which means history does provide lessons, if heeded.

Here are two of behavioral economist and Nobel prize-winner Robert J Shiller’s most memorable statements in Irrational Exuberance: “ 'It amazes me how people are often more willing to act based on little or no data than to use data that is a challenge to assemble.”…'The ability to focus attention on important things is a defining characteristic of intelligence."

We know it’s best to slow down one’s thinking process before making an important decision. But how often do we?

Harlan Green © 2020

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Disaster Preparation—Why Irrational Exuberance?

Popular Economics Weekly

WTI Crude Oil

Stock and bond prices are gyrating when the world economy doesn’t seem to know what to make of China’s coronavirus that has now spread to some 23 countries, according to latest reports.

And that is not a good time for irrational exuberance to appear in U.S. financial markets, since much of the financial gyrations are driven by excess liquidity—too abundant cash from the 2017 corporate tax cuts are pushing stock prices to record highs, and bond yields to record lows—both signs of price bubbles sure to burst on signals that world trade in particular could be affected by what economists call such an unpredictable, “exogenous” event.

The medical consensus to date is that the coronavirus doesn’t seem as virulent as the 2003 SARS outbreak, yet the number of deaths and infection rate to date has already exceeded that of the SARS virus.

The NYTimes reports this respiratory virus has infected more than 17,000 people, killing “at least” 360. “But the Wuhan coronavirus may be highly transmissible, as contagious as seasonal influenza that kills many more, and the death rate is still unknown.”

Why could this pandemic that the World Health Organization has now labeled a global public health emergency be dangerous to global growth?

Nobel economist Paul Krugman says it’s because China’s economy is many times larger than it was in 2003, so the effect of closing down major Chinese cities until more is known about the virus could be economically devastating to China and other economies that depend on Chinese goods and services. The EU is one such market that is worried because 20 percent of its exports now go to China.

Crude oil imports to China, the world’s largest consumer of oil, have also dropped 20 percent and oil prices are down approximately 10 percent, which has OPEC producers scrambling to cut production quotas.

Other economists are voicing similar warnings. Yale economist Dr. Stephen Roach, former Morgan Stanley chief economist and chairman of Morgan Stanley’s Asia Desk, is making good sense with his predictions of worse things to come.

He’s talking about world trade volumes, which have dropped precipitously. And worldwide growth depends even more today on world trade, which has already been harmed by the Trump trade wars.

Roach in recent Project Syndicate comments, said that from 1990 to 2008, annual growth in world trade was fully 82 percent faster than world GDP growth. And this cushion has shrunk dramatically, to just 13 percent over the 2010-19 period, “leaving the world economy more vulnerable to all-too-frequent shocks.”

“The IMF’s latest assessment put global trade growth at just 1% in 2019 – its seventh consecutive downward revision,” said Roach. “Indeed, last year was the weakest trade performance since the historic 10.4% plunge in 2009, which was the worst contraction since the early 1930s.”

Is Roach being an unnecessary alarmist? I don’t think so, when compared to the Great Depression. Now is not the time for irrational exuberance of any kind with world economies retreating in the face of so much geopolitical uncertainty (e.g., rising isolationism from rising nationalism).

Are we prepared? 

Harlan Green © 2019

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Why the Irrational Exuberance In Such A Dangerous Year?

Financial FAQs

Wrightson.com

We are now living in a much more dangerous world, because there is the possibility of war in the Middle East that is accompanying the various trade wars waged by the “Make America Great” White House.

In fact, it may have already begun with the “revenge” missile attacks by Iran against two Iraqi military bases housing U.S. personnel—though no casualties were reported. My wonder is that stocks are rallying on the news, with the DOW Jones up 200 points at this writing. Have stockholders forgotten the irrational exuberance reigning during Fed Chairman Greenspan’s tenure in the last decade?

It was such that Greenspan, et. al., raised the Fed’s interest rates 16 times (a total of 4 percent) over 2 years, which ultimately led to a busted housing bubble and the 2017-19 Great Recession that hasn’t been a full recovery for the majority of Americans.

In fact, median household incomes are still at 1970’s levels when inflation is subtracted, because most of the growth has been in stocks owned by just 50 percent of households, not with the wages and salaries of working folk. Hence the record income inequality that isn’t getting better, even at full employment.

And what if stocks plunge again as during the Great Recession that lost an estimated $9 trillion in value, with housing values also declining almost as much (the mainstay of middle class wealth)?
Greenspan had held rates too low for too long to finance the Bush/Cheney Iraq and Afghanistan occupations while cutting taxes at the same time, resulting in rising inflation and the largest federal budget deficit of the time.

In fact, we seem to be at the beginning of another period of irrational exuberance. The Fed dropped interest rates three times last year to boost slowing economic growth.

Manufacturing activity has been declining for the last five months, per Reuter’s Wrightson ISM Manufacturing Index graph above, mainly due to the various tariff hikes that bumped up prices on European and Chinese imports.

The service industries have been declining from a higher level of activity to the current 55 percent, reflected in the latest ISM non-manufacturing survey (also see graph, where a 50 percent result of those surveyed means breakeven growth).

“The upside surprise (of non-manufacturing survey) was almost entirely due to the subjective general business activity index, which rebounded by nearly six points to 57.2,” said Reuters.  “The employment and new orders indexes both fell.  The drop-off in employment was minimal (down 0.3 to 55.2), but the orders index fell off noticeably (down 2.2 points to 54.9, versus an annual average of 57.5). ”

Also important is the effect on world oil prices and economic growth in general, as I said in my last column, since the only reason the U.S. economy is continuing to grow is the very low inflation coupled with very low, recession-level interest rates. And that can’t be maintained if oil prices spike for some reason.

FRED.gov

We are skating on thin ice, economically, as I said, even if oil prices and inflation don’t spike as they did during the early and mid-2000s. Oil may not be as important, but 39.7 million Americans still live at or below the U.S. poverty level, which is $21,300 for a family of three in 2017, per the U.S. Census Bureau, and median household incomes after inflation are not improving.

So the real question is why on earth did the U.S. kill Iran’s leading general and several Iraqi militia commanders at a time of recovery from the Great Recession, slowing worldwide growth, amid growing geopolitical uncertainty?

It has to be another form of irrational exuberance held by certain parties that believe this will make America Great Again, but without the friends and alliances that made America great until now.

Harlan Green © 2019

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Irrational Exuberance Is Back!

Financial FAQs

Wrightson-ICAP

Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said in a memorable 1996 speech, “…how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade?”

He was then talking about the penchant for investors to act irrationally in ignoring very high stock valuations accompanying very low interest rates that could show a stock market, and maybe the overall economy, about to enter a down cycle.

Does that sound familiar? We have today the S&P index of 500 top stocks with a price-to-earning ration above 18—i.e., it’s price is 18 times annual earnings, after expenses (EBITDA---earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) when the historical long-term P/E earnings ratio is 15, according to Nobel economist Robert Shiller in his 2000 best-seller, Irrational Exuberance; and which increases the odds of a recession.

For instance, the irrational behavior that Greenspan was warning about in 1996 wasn’t manifested until the Dot-com bubble bust of 2000 and following 2001 recession, when the P/E ratio reached 44 times earnings. In other words, stock prices were way out of whack with earnings that had been declining—so much so that stock prices had flattened and corporations were barely issuing any dividends at all—a sign that their earnings were depressed.

And what depresses an economy more than depressed corporate earnings, which then depress job formation, consumer incomes, and overall economic growth?

Professor Shiller gave the 100-year history of stock market P/Es in his book. The last time it had reached great heights was in 1929, and the beginning of the Great Depression.

So irrational exuberance is something to worry about when looking at stock valuations. We are in similar, but not identical circumstances today. The S&P P/E ratio is 18, according to Forbes Magazine.

“On a cautionary note related to the earnings skid,” says Forbes, “the S&P 500’s price-to-earnings ratio has been on the rise and now stands near 18 times projected earnings over the next 12 months. That’s way above the 14 level where we started the year, and it exceeds the long-term average of around 16. Remember, it’s harder to grow the “P” side of that equation when the “E” side is on the decline.”

Why such irrational exuberance today, after past history tells us what happens when investors act irrationally in the face of reality?

Professor Shiller explains it thusly: “(President) Trump has for decades touted a glamorous narrative of his life by “surrounding himself with apparently adoring beautiful women, and maintaining the appearance of vast influence,” Shiller said in a recent op-ed in Britain’s the Guardian newspaper. “The end of confidence in Trump’s narrative is likely to be associated with a recession,” Shiller warned.

Shiller goes much deeper into human behavior in Irrational Exuberance. Human beings have a natural inclination to listen to hearsay and word-of-mouth stories when they make financial decisions, such as buying a home, or stocks. This is in part because of the complexity of modern financial markets, but also because such research is difficult and requires some expertise.

The busted housing bubble is the best example of irrational exuberance, when consumers believed that housing prices could never fall, because they hadn’t in modern history—at least since WWII—so they kept elevating housing prices with the aid of so-called liar loans, because interest rates had fallen far below inflation rates at the time.

Inflation was so far above interest rates that there was a zero cost to borrowing mortgages, in particular, since rising inflation devalued loan principal faster than the actual loan payments over a 15 or 30-year mortgage.

This could happen again today, in other words. Although corporate profits are still at record highs, they may have already begun their descent to more historical levels, and maybe even lower, if consumers become disillusioned with the Trump ‘success’ narrative, as Professor Shiller has said.

Harlan Green © 2019

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

What is a Common Sense Stock Market?

Financial FAQs

Pundits and stock traders seem to believe Friday and Monday’s stock “massacre” was caused by too-quick trigger fingers—in computers controlled by algorithms, not people.

Whereas, investors and traders using their common sense would have seen the ‘yuge’ drop in valuations made no sense for many of the S&P 500 stocks of the largest US corporations that were making record profits.  Then they might not have oversold their holdings, as happened to those with the trigger-finger algorithms.

For instance, Boeing’s common stock price dropped $20 in a day when news came out that its profits are increasing and there are predictions of large future cash flows from its booming airline and defense businesses. And corporations such as Boeing will be saving $billions in future taxes due to the lower corporate tax rate.

What about the rest of the economy? Stocks have historically been a prediction of future economic activity, since they are priced at a discount to future earnings. So the total annual return of capital gains plus dividends can be a prediction of a company’s financial health.

Nobel laureate economist Robert Shiller in his best-selling Irrational Exuberance, a historical analysis of stock and bond yields, says stocks have earned $7 per year on average in capital gains plus dividends, bonds 4 percent per year for the past 100 years. 

And Dr. Shiller said Price-to-earnings ratios, another measure of stock values, averaged 15 to 1 historically. Today, the S&P P/E ratio is 17, meaning 17 times earnings, which is high, but not that high. In fact, the stock P/E’s reached 26 times earnings just before the Great Depression, and an oxygen-deprived 44 times earnings in 2000 on the eve of the dot-com crash.

That was why Dr.Shiller and Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan sounded the alarm over the  irrational exuberance that was “infecting” investors at the time. Dr. Greenspan’s famous warning was given in 1996, four years before the 2000 crash, when he said: “But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade?”

Japan has finally worked their way out of two decades of virtual deflation at a tremendous cost to growth, because of their spate of irrational exuberance. They now rank behind China and the European Union in the size of their economy.

Our stock market is in a similar circumstance today when too much money is chasing 50 percent fewer publicly listed stocks than in 1996, as I said in yesterday’s column. And there are already indications that corporations will be doing more of the same with the new tax savings.

But there is good news for employees. Friday’s unemployment report unveiled the largest pay increase in years. Average hourly earnings jumped to a year-on-year expansion best of 2.9 percent.  This is while the Fed’s core PCE inflation index is just 1.5 percent, way below its 2 percent stated target.

Graph: Econoday

Wages and salaries, the actual hourly incomes of normal working stiffs that excludes interest-bearing bank accounts, rental income, retirement benefits, stock dividends or annuities, actually rose year-on-year to 4.9 percent for its 5th straight climb and is now at its highest rate since November 2015.

And the just released JOLTS report of job hires and openings showed more workers quitting jobs voluntarily, which means they were finding better paying jobs. Job openings have slowed a bit, down 2.8 percent in December to 5.811 million, whereas Hires are steady, down fractionally in the month to 5.488 million. But that is keeping the spread between openings and hires also steady, at 323,000—which means 323,000 net job openings that haven’t been filled.

This might be why wages and salaries are finally increasing faster than the inflation rate, but it can also be that minimum wages in coastal states in particular are creeping toward $15 per hour by 2022, since 80 percent of the workforce depends on wages and salaries.

What should we make of the possibility of more irrational exuberance pushing stock valuations too high? Corporate profits will increase with the tax cuts, wages and salaries are soaring, and inflation is far away from the 2 percent target.

I believe investors should focus on price-to-earnings ratios, which also tell us whether stock prices have strayed too far from actual earnings.  Dr. Shiller warns irrational exuberance could infect investors again, if the S&P P/E ratio strays once more into the mid-twenties.

Harlan Green © 2018

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen