Making History – Quote of the Week

Highly regarded author and analyst Vern Gowdie had this to say yesterday:

“The world we now inhabit is going to occupy the pages of economic textbooks in years to come. We are making history for all the wrong reasons:

• Unprecedented money printing efforts in the US, Japan and Europe
• The lowest (and most sustained period of low) interest rates in history
• Never before seen negative interest rates in Europe
• Historically high levels of wealth concentration amongst the top 3%
• Share indices reaching record highs
• Record levels of youth unemployment
• Historically high levels of public debt in both dollar terms and as a percentage of GDP
• Valuation metrics (Tobin Q ratio, Shiller P/E 10) that exceed Great Depression levels
• The greatest level of real income shrinkage since the Second World War
• The lowest inflation readings in Europe since the Great Depression

Every meaningful economic and financial indicator is registering at the extremes. For obvious reasons these extreme periods are rare in history. They also all end very badly.”