December 15, 2017
I see that I got cited at the top of a NYT column this week. Desmond Lachman, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute (who I know and respect) had a column warning about the rise of bubbles around the world and the risk of their collapse. The first sentence tells us, “no one seemed to have anticipated the world’s worst financial crisis in the postwar period.” Yeah, well I realize I wasn’t very successful in getting my warnings across, but I sure did try.
Anyhow, I would say that Lachman is about half-right on the current situation. Many economies do seem to be seeing new bubbles. The housing markets in Canada, Australia, and the UK seem especially out of line. The bursting of bubbles in these markets is likely to be bad news for these countries; however, I don’t see comparable bubbles in the U.S. and most other major markets. If the more clearly identifiable bubbles burst, it does not look like 2008 all over again and a worldwide recession. (China looks bubbly too, but they have managed to go four decades without a recession, so I wouldn’t bet against them at this point.)
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