>Yeah, but there's a qualitative difference here, doncha think? Now he's
>talking about imminent inflation concerns
Oh yes, and he's making those tight labor market noises again. But he's been doing that on & off for a couple of years, often in the same speech as some New Paradigm blather.
>and hinting at an interest rate
>hike in June or July. And he was then talking about 1987,
1996, with an implied parallel to Tokyo in 1989.
>whereas now,
>hundreds of thousands of traders have their nesteggs (not to say borrowed
>money) in stocks. If that absolute number is not a great worry as yet, the
>remorseless rise in people going in for a piece of the action must be ('the
>complexity of the interactions of asset markets and the economy' is ever
>all the more so). They'll be the ones who got in above the levels at which
>they'll have to get out - and I'm sure the stats don't exist with which we
>can determine how many of 'em are Ponzis and how many of 'em are playing
>with their retirement independence.
I'm sure we'll find out sometime after the fact. Alan can make all the noise he wants, but until he pushes up rates, the mania is likely to continue.
>The Oz market dropped finance stocks en masse on Friday (admittedly putting
>a lot of it back into resource stocks) - I'm wondering if they're thinking
>along the above lines, that's all.
The U.S. bond market has been acting that way, and cyclical stocks (those whose fortunes are more tied to the business cycle than most) have been too. At least that was the thinking last week; we'll see what the thinking is this week.
Doug