Since the start of the year, the Dow is down about 7%. But certain stock market sectors have undergone a much harder pruning. First, energy… then the tech… and now banks. Shares in too-big-to-fail bank Citigroup are down almost 28% so far this year. And shares in Europe’s biggest bank, Deutsche Bank, are down by more than 36%.
As always, we don’t know where this leads.
But as we warned at the start of the year, it could be the beginning of a serious bear market. And more! As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Samuelson put it, the stock market has famously predicted nine out of the last five recessions. Further study shows that a stock market plunge of 10% has about a 50% probability of presaging a recession… 100% of the time!
Hope that’s clear.
But a stock market plunge not only predicts trouble in the economy; it also causes it. The Fed’s treasured “wealth effect” – in which investors, seeing the value of their portfolios rise, feel richer and rush out and spend – works in both directions. When stock prices fall, investors pull back on spending, and the economy goes into a cold funk.
The further stocks fall… the more the likelihood that the economy will follow. This has the central planners worried.
Pushing on a String
Here’s the chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, Martin Wolf:
What might central banks do if the next recession hit while interest rates were still far below pre-2008 levels? As a paper from the London-based Resolution Foundation argues, this is highly likely. Central banks need to be prepared for this eventuality.
How?
The most important part of such preparation is to convince the public that they know what to do.
Good luck with that!
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