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Economics in Person – Understanding the Slow Recovery
Mark Zandi, “Headwinds Fade, Tailwinds Develop”
00:10
1
Let me begin by saying I’m optimistic about the economy’s
prospects. Let me give you a few numbers, just to make that
concrete, and then I’ll try to defend it. GDP has been growing
about two percent-ish since the recovery began; the recovery is
almost four years old—hard to believe, but it’s been four years of
recovery. Q1 is actually going to be close to four; it was a pretty
strong quarter. But that comes after no growth in the fourth
00:37
quarter of last year, so you average it, it’s still about two percent
growth. I don’t think things change a whole lot, over the next
couple, three quarters it’s going to be at two percent, calendar year
2013 is going to be a couple percentage points. But I do expect
much better growth in ‘14, closer to three and a half percent, and
even better than that in ‘15, growth of over four percent.
01:03
So that means more jobs. The economy’s been creating a couple
million per annum; that’s what we’ve been doing for the last two
years. That’s roughly what we’re going to create this year, a couple
million jobs, but next year I expect three million and about the
same in 2015. And that means unemployment will eventually come
down. We’re at 7.6; I don’t know if we’ll make a whole lot of
progress this year. If we do, it’s only because labor force will
continue to climb. But I do expect a lot of progress in ‘14 and ‘15,
and I expect to be back to full employment, which is an
Economics in Person – Understanding the Slow Recovery
Mark Zandi, “Headwinds Fade, Tailwinds Develop”
01:32
2
unemployment rate of 5.5, 6%, by mid-2016. So June 2, 2 p.m.
eastern, something like that, we’ll be back to full employment. Let
me say two things about the outlook before I move on. First is, I
am more optimistic than the consensus. Take a look at the Federal
Reserve’s forecast. Very similar for 2013, Q4—for Q4 my forecast is
2.6; that’s right at the mid-point of the Fed forecast. But I am
02:02
stronger for 2014 and 2015; I’m more optimistic. The second thing
I’ll say about the forecast is—and you should know this—I’ve been
wrong, you know [Laughter]. I’ve been overly optimistic for the last
couple of years. I had expected more from our economy; it has
been disappointing, particularly in terms of GDP growth. Not every
measure, but in terms of GDP growth in particular. And, you
know, I've done a lot of soul–searching and trying to ask why.
02:32
I think one of the key reasons is the long shadow of the recession
itself. I underestimated the damage the recession did to the
collective psyche. I’m a numbers guy; you know, you have models,
and I didn’t pay enough attention to sentiment. It’s very important;
confidence is key, particularly when you go through such a
wrenching period. And I underestimated the gravitational force
from what we went through. So I think that’s been a
03:05
significant drag. You know, I think also the nature of the shocks
we’ve been grappling with, I think conflating with a lack of
Economics in Person – Understanding the Slow Recovery
Mark Zandi, “Headwinds Fade, Tailwinds Develop”
3
confidence. So, you know, the European debt crisis, it’s pretty hard
to handicap the risk that that poses. If you're a business person,
you have a pretty good grip on what’s going on in your industry,
certainly what’s going on in your company, you can attach a
probability to the—to the risks that you face. But to attach a
03:31
probability to a crack up of the Euro zone, that’s pretty difficult to
do. You can listen to economists like me say it’s one-third
probability, but, you know, appropriately so you don’t believe it.
And if you can't attach a probability to something, you can't plug it
into a spreadsheet, then that means—it doesn’t mean you're going
to cut employment, doesn’t mean you're going to pull back on
investments to a significant degree; that would be a recession. But
it does mean
03:54
you’ll freeze; you won't engage, you won't take the risks that you
normally take. And the fiscal issues also, very similar kind of
existential threat that’s very difficult to attach probability to. You
know, you go back to the summer of 2011, when it felt like we were
going to reach the debt ceiling, we felt like we were going to shut
the government down a couple of times. That really makes people
nervous, and I think, particularly in the context of a lack of
confidence.
04:25
I also think, regardless of how you feel about Dodd-Frank and
Economics in Person – Understanding the Slow Recovery
Mark Zandi, “Headwinds Fade, Tailwinds Develop”
4
healthcare reform, you know, I’m not commenting on the merits of
those particular reforms; there's good and bad in both of them. But
I think it’s pretty straightforward to say these are pretty wrenching
changes for the financial system and for businesses in general to
grapple with. A lot of moving parts. The moving parts are still
moving in many regards, and until we get full clarity, it’s hard for
businesses to really engage. So these are the kinds of things, I
think, conspire to cause the recovery to fall short of my
expectations.
05:04
Now, you may be asking, well, why do you think any different now?
I have to say, it feels like to me—and I know that’s squishy—but it
feels like to me confidence is in a much better place today than a
year or two ago. I talk to lots of different business people and lots
of parts of our economy, all across the country, and there is a
palpable change in sentiment. Actually, here in San Francisco, it’s
unbelievable. When you take a look at the city it’s just incredible,
what you see.
05:33
I come from Philadelphia; that’s not quite San Francisco. But even
there, confidence has improved. Those existential threats, uh they
feel a lot less threatening, you know, given what the European
Central Bank has done, the commitment that they’ve made, it
seems very—or I should say, much less likely that the Euro zone
Economics in Person – Understanding the Slow Recovery
Mark Zandi, “Headwinds Fade, Tailwinds Develop”
5
will crack up. It’s going to be a slog for Europe under any kind of
scenario, but they’ll keep it together and so that—that threat just
feels less threatening.
06:05
And even the fiscal issues. I mean, we've got the debt ceiling we’ve
got to get around, that’s coming up. But that’s the last big hurdle,
and I think—there the odds are now much lower that these folks
are—in Washington—are going to take it right to the brink. And,
you know, there'll be some brinkmanship and some vitriol, but I
don’t think it’ll be on par with what we’ve experienced. So—and
Dodd-Frank, healthcare reform, we’re well on our way to nailing
those
06:31
things down. We’re not quite there yet, but I figure a year from
now, I think those issues will be resolved to a significant degree. So
I think the things that have conspired to make this a very sub-par
recovery are becoming less significant. And all the good that’s
happened in our economy will begin to shine through.
06:51
Now, to get to my optimism, we do need to get through some pretty
significant fiscal headwinds that are dead ahead. If you add up all
the drag from all the various policy that’s been implemented over
the past couple of years, it’s going to cut about a point and a half
from GDP growth in 2013—1.5 percentage points. Just to give you
context, the expiration of the payroll tax holiday, that’s probably
Economics in Person – Understanding the Slow Recovery
Mark Zandi, “Headwinds Fade, Tailwinds Develop”
6
five, six tenths of a percent. The sequester, it’s about half a
percentage point. And all the other tax cuts and spending cuts,
that’s another half a percent. So that’s pretty significant. That’s
07:27
the—this is ambitious. I mean, the last time we, as a nation, have
gone through this kind of fiscal drag was in—just immediately after
World War II, and the draw down after the war. The British have
tried something a little bit—a little bit more austerity than this;
they had a fiscal drag of one and a half to two percentage points
back a couple years ago, and the apex of their drag has been tough
on their economy. So this is pretty serious stuff. And the apex of
the fiscal drag in our country literally will be in Q2-Q3 of this year.
07:57
So, you know, my sense, it’s going to feel a little bit uncomfortable,
that things are going to kind of throttle back—we’ll be lucky if we
get two percent-ish annualized growth in the next couple of
quarters. Job growth will slow—maybe not to the same degree—
but it’s going to feel uncomfortable. And we are going to be
vulnerable at that point, if anything else goes wrong—and I’ll come
back to that in a few minutes. But I do think we’ll navigate
through. And, you know, there's—if we do, I think we’re in pretty
good shape. My sense
08:30
is the debt limit will be increased, again with a little bit of angst
and brinkmanship and vitriol, but I think the politics are such that
Economics in Person – Understanding the Slow Recovery
Mark Zandi, “Headwinds Fade, Tailwinds Develop”
7
the Democrats and the Republicans will come together and will get
a reasonable solution to it. And I don’t—I don’t think we’ll get
much more additional deficit reduction of consequence—maybe
some things on the margin, but I don’t think it’s going to be of
significant consequence. But that’s OK; it’s not great. It would be
wonderful if we could come to terms on entitlement reform and
09:02
tax reform and have more deficit reduction and get the debt to GDP
ratio moving south in a consistent way. But I don’t think that’s
going to happen. But again, that’s not—it’s OK. We have
accomplished a lot in the last couple of years. You know, it
doesn’t—it’s hard to believe, but all this Sturm und Drang, all this
angst, has resulted in some significant deficit reduction, and under
reasonable economic assumptions, deficits in the future will be
09:32
small enough that the nation’s debt to GDP ratio will stabilize—at a
high level, admittedly. It’s not a great place to be. Publicly traded
debt to GDP will be about 75%, but, you know, that’s—that’s OK.
And it’s OK in the sense that fiscal policy’s going to fade from the
front pages, and will allow the private sector to do its thing, and for
it to shine through, and we can really hit escape velocity and get
moving here.
10:01
How are you feeling? [Laughter] I haven't really given you anything
meaty yet. Let me give you a couple of real substantive reasons for
Economics in Person – Understanding the Slow Recovery
Mark Zandi, “Headwinds Fade, Tailwinds Develop”
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optimism; I’ll give you two. I could give you more, but Mary only
gave me 30 minutes, so I’ll give you two. And you should actually
soak this in, because I will leave a few minutes at the end to take
you back down, so take this in. [Laughter]..
10:26
The first reason is, I think we have righted a lot of the wrongs that
got us into this mess. You know, at core, the reason for the
financial collapse and the great recession is that we made a lot of
bad loans. Bad in the sense that under reasonable economic
assumptions, these loans would not get repaid, and obviously they
did not. Brought the system to its knees, required a bailout, and
thus the Great Recession. But the good news is that we have
worked through these problem loans in lightning speed.
11:01
You know, we—I think we've gone down roughly the same path
every other economy historically has gone down in the wake of a
financial crisis. It’s not like we’ve done anything terribly different;
it’s just that we've done it very, very rapidly. We have, in fact,
completed the deleveraging process. And you can see that—right
from the beginning of the crisis, and you take the banking system
the whole stress test process was really quite amazing. I was very
skeptical, back in early 2009, about the efficacy of that policy
11:31
stuff, but it actually worked out to be quite—quite important. We
required our banks to go through very stressful stress tests; they
Economics in Person – Understanding the Slow Recovery
Mark Zandi, “Headwinds Fade, Tailwinds Develop”
9
had to raise a boatload of capital. And it’s now, I think, fair to say
they have plenty of capital. If you look at the FDIC data, tier one
capital ratios, Q4 2012 were nine and a quarter percent. That’s the
highest it’s ever been. On average, it’s about seven and a half
percentage points. Liquidity—very ample. Obviously, credit
12:03
quality is very good and improving on a daily basis. The banking
system is on very solid ground, and the credit spigot should
steadily open. And this stands in striking contrast to what’s gone
on in the rest of the world. Take the European experience.
Europeans still, to this day, have not engaged in a truly serious
round of stress testing. The first round of stress tests, obviously,
wasn’t very therapeutic. The Irish Banking System went belly up a
week after the stress tests-results were announced. The second
round was a little bit better, but Dexia, the big Belgian/French
bank went belly up a week or two after those stress tests. They
seem to have gotten the hang of it, but at the end of the day, they
haven't required their banking system to raise enough capital, and
of course, the Europeans are much more dependent on the
banking
12:53
system to provide capital than here in the United States, where our
capital markets are quite deep and are very important. So their
economic prospects are very, very different than ours, and it’s
Economics in Person – Understanding the Slow Recovery
Mark Zandi, “Headwinds Fade, Tailwinds Develop”
10
largely because they have not de-leveraged like, like we have.
Nonfinancial US corporations have done an excellent job of deleveraging. Take any measure of balance sheet strength that you
want, it looks about as good as it’s ever been in the data that I've
seen. Interest covered ratios, quick ratios, plenty of cash.
Businesses have done a marvelous job reducing their cost
13:28
structures; profit margins are as wide as they’ve ever been.
Profitability’s very strong. They're very competitive. You know,
labor costs today are about where they were five, six years ago, and
in manufacturing, which obviously globally trading, very
competitive, labor costs are back to where they were 20 or 25 years
ago. And that’s all in dollar terms; if you put that into RNB terms
or real terms, or rupee terms, it’s even more compelling. And then
you throw in the fact that energy and availability of energy, prices
are going to remain low, I think our companies are sitting in very
good shape. And household sector, also. Now, here we have to
14:08
make a little bit of a distinction between low income households,
lower/middle income households and high income households.
Those folks in the bottom part of the distribution of income, they're
clearly struggling. That’s where we still have some foreclosure
issues, and student loan debt is clearly an issue. But folks in the
top part of the distribution, they're doing fabulously well, I’d say
Economics in Person – Understanding the Slow Recovery
Mark Zandi, “Headwinds Fade, Tailwinds Develop”
11
the top third, maybe even the top half. If they have any debt at all,
it’s a 30-year fixed rate mortgage loan they’ve been refi-ing down,
probably have a coupon, now four, four and a half percent, and
they’re taking to get down into three and a half to four percent.
14:45
They may have an auto loan, but the only reason they have an
auto loan is it’s free money. You know, you get an auto loan for a
couple, three percentage points, so why wouldn’t you take an auto
loan? You can see it in the credit statistics. So we collect data from
Equifax, the credit bureau, on all the credit files in the country,
and compile this every month. And just got the March data and
here’s just a statistic. If you look at the 30 to 90 day delinquency
rate, percent of dollars outstanding, on all household liabilities—
15:08
ex-first mortgage; let’s just exclude first mortgage for a second—
that’s credit card, auto, consumer finance, student loans, home
equity, closed end seconds, you know, everything. The delinquency
rate as of the end of March was 1.9%--1.9%. Just for context,
that’s lower than at the low point in the middle of the housing
bubble back in 2006; the low point back in 2006 was 2.1%--2.1%.
Even first mortgage. We’ve made a lot of progress. The delinquency
rate, 30-90 day delinquent, percent of dollar outstanding, end of
March, seasonally adjusted, stood at 2.8%. The peak was seven;
15:57
that was in early 2009. And the low point, back in early 2006, it
Economics in Person – Understanding the Slow Recovery
Mark Zandi, “Headwinds Fade, Tailwinds Develop”
12
was 2.2%. and 30 day delinquent is already at a record low, so the
number of—the percent of first mortgage loans that are one month
late is at a record low. Two months late is almost at a record low,
and 90 is still elevated, but coming down very rapidly. Yes, we have
a lot of loans in the foreclosure process, but on the other side of
that, once we work through those loans, the credit environment is
unbelievably good. It’s just beautiful. In the United States, cutting
across all bank assets; it’s going to look as good as it has ever
looked, in terms of credit quality, a year from now.
16:41
How are you feeling now? Better? OK, let me give you one more
reason for optimism—and this is where we get the juice. You know,
the reason I just gave you, the de-leveraging process, that it’s over
more what I consider a fundamental structural reason. Let me give
you a cyclical reason, and that’s housing. You know, the housing
market is kicking into full swing. Now let me give you a little bit of
data just to reinforce the point. The current level of construction—
that would be single family, multi-family and manufactured
housing, is running around 950,000 units. That’s annualized. Just
for context, at the low point back in early 2009, construction was
running somewhere around 500 to 550,000 units. And that is as
low as it had ever been since World War II. So that was a pretty
17:26
low level of activity. So we’ve made some significant progress—and
Economics in Person – Understanding the Slow Recovery
Mark Zandi, “Headwinds Fade, Tailwinds Develop”
13
it is adding to economic activity. In a normal economy—not even,
you know, a really good one, just a normalized economy, we should
be producing 1.8 million housing units. That would be 1.25 million
households that should get formed every year. That’s just looking
at population growth, and the ethnic and age distribution of the
population. And, of course, we’ve been well below that for much of
the last several years. Twenty-somethings can't find work, they’ve
17:56
been doubling up with their parents. So you could argue, there's a
fair amount of pent up household formation that will get unleashed
at some point in the not too distant future when we start to get
some more job growth. But let’s just go with 1.25 million. Three
hundred and fifty thousand in obsolescence, so, you know,
Hurricane Sandy blew through my neighborhood, wiped out
250,000 homes. Now that’s an extreme example, but we have
hurricanes on the east coast; they seem to be coming with
increasing regularity and severity. Tornadoes, and just normal
18:25
obsolescence, about 350K. and then those high income
households? Those folks, the—many of them are in their 50s, are
thinking about—that’s the teeth of the Boomer generation, they're
thinking about second vacation homes, and we’re building a couple
hundred thousand of those every year. So you add that up—1.25
million formations, 350K in obsolescence, a couple hundred
Economics in Person – Understanding the Slow Recovery
Mark Zandi, “Headwinds Fade, Tailwinds Develop”
14
thousand vacation homes, is 1.8 million. We’re going to go from the
current level of construction—950K—to 1.8 million over the next
18:54
several of years. And that provides a lot of economic growth and a
lot of jobs—just another rule of thumb—every single family start
generates somewhere around four and a half to five jobs over a
period of a year. So that’s construction jobs, it’s manufacturing
jobs, you know, the lumber, fixtures, all the fabricated metals—
steel, cement. It’s trucking jobs—you’ve got to move all that stuff
around. It’s financial services jobs, it’s the Home Depot, it’s Lowe’s,
it’s home improvement. It’s cable hookup, it’s landscaping—it runs
deep into the labor market. And actually,
19:34
this is very, very important to small businesses, because smaller
establishments, companies, those with less than 50 employees,
particularly those with less than 20, are very tied in—
disproportionately tied into the construction cycle. And you can
feel it; if you look at some of the payroll processing data form ADP
that we collect, you can see that the companies that are very, very
small are now coming back to life. And job growth among those
companies in the last six to 12 months has been stronger than
20:00
at other size companies, which is a complete reversal of what had
been going on throughout the—throughout the economic recovery.
Now, I could be a little optimistic about how quickly the supply
Economics in Person – Understanding the Slow Recovery
Mark Zandi, “Headwinds Fade, Tailwinds Develop”
15
side of the housing market kicks in here. You know, the recession
was pretty debilitating to the housing industry; kind of wiped out
the infrastructure for building. And it takes time to resurrect that,
particularly in key housing markets, like in California, where, you
know, the permitting process is very cumbersome. So you know, it
may take a little bit longer than expected. I was at a Harvard Joint
20:34
Center for Housing Studies meeting a couple, three weeks ago, and
this was a really good meeting, because you get CEOs of builders
and building supply and finance companies—companies that
finance these guys, banks that finance these guys. And they were
obviously very optimistic and euphoric, but the thing that they
were most worried about is, can I get enough flatbed trucks; you
know, can I get enough forklift operators? For the small builders,
can I get construction land development loans? The big guys, no
problem; they have access to capital markets, and they have plenty
of cash, but the smaller builders need—need the bank credit.
21:10
And, of course, banks are still—particularly smaller banks are still
quite reluctant to make those loans in the context of loss that
they’ve taken on that type of lending. So could be that I’m overly
optimistic about how quickly things ramp up. But if that’s the
case, then we’re just going to get even more economic growth as we
move into 2015 and 2016. May not happen in 2014, but it will
Economics in Person – Understanding the Slow Recovery
Mark Zandi, “Headwinds Fade, Tailwinds Develop”
16
happen; I’ve very convicted of that. One other thing I’ll say about
that is, if I’m wrong about the pace at which builders put up
homes, I’m probably also wrong about the pace of house price
growth. So currently I’m expecting mid-single digit house price
21:46
growth, which is, you know, slightly less than what we got in 2012.
But if you listen to the builders, they're licking their chops. If they
can't build a home, they're going to raise price, and they, in fact,
would much rather raise the price than build a home; much easier
way to make money, to raise the price than build a home. And so
we could see much stronger house price growth in the next couple
of years than anyone’s anticipating. The other thing that would
support that is it appears that people—potential sellers are not
putting homes on the market because they seem to have some
kind of reservation price in mind. They—they have in their
22:20
mind, what is a fair value for their home. Some obviously are
underwater and they’re not going to sell until they're above water
and can cover their transaction costs in a sale. But others feel like
I know what my home should be worth, and I’m not going to list
that home until I hit that price or come close to it. If that’s the
case, we could see some pretty—if you look at inventory of homes
for sale, they're rock bottom; they're very low. And so that could
mean we could get some really heady house price growth over the
Economics in Person – Understanding the Slow Recovery
Mark Zandi, “Headwinds Fade, Tailwinds Develop”
17
next couple of years. And, of course, you know, that has negatives,
but I think at this point there are much bigger positives, and it will
be very, very good for economic activity.
22:53
So, the thing that—the reason I think that I am more optimistic
than the consensus is not because everyone else doesn’t know this
about the housing market. But I think they are underestimating
how powerful this is going to be—just like we—many
underestimated the drag from the housing collapse, on the flip
side, back in the peak of the economic recession.
23:21
This is it; this is the apex. How are you feeling? [Laughter] Let me
end with—just because it is appropriate to talk about the risks,
‘cause there are plenty. Let me just stipulate that, you know,
Washington remains a risk. The debt limit is a thorny problem,
and again, we’re going to be debating that when the economy
probably is going to be on the soft side. Remember, the next sixnine months are going to be, I think, a bit uncomfortable. And
Washington could make that worse. So we’ll just stipulate that as a
risk. Let’s stipulate that Europe is a risk, you know, much less so,
but nonetheless, these countries are under severe economic
pressure, unemployment in the entire Euro zone is now 12%
24:11
and rising. The full employment/unemployment rate in Europe, in
the Euro zone, is probably somewhere around eight and a half
Economics in Person – Understanding the Slow Recovery
Mark Zandi, “Headwinds Fade, Tailwinds Develop”
18
percent. You know, you go into Spain, or Italy, or Greece, you
know, real—this is real stress. And the political process could
come unraveled. I don’t think that’s the base line, but it’s certainly
a possibility. So we can't discount that. And there's always, given
what happened with the Cypriot banking situation that reminds us
that, you know, there is the possibility of a policy error that could
make things go in the wrong direction.
24:46
There are other geopolitical risks; I’ll mention two. There is,
obviously, North Korea. We all discount that, but again, you can't
really handicap it. The other thing—the other geopolitical risk,
though, that I worry more about is Iran and the Iranian oil
embargo. Despite all the good things that are happening in our
energy sector, we still are very energy dependent. Oil prices rise—
that’s a big—and gasoline prices—and you guys know this better
than I, here in California that’s a big problem. So I worry about
that.
25:18
But let me end with one last risk. This is the risk I hear non-stop
now, when I travel the country, and that’s the risk posed by rising
interest rates. And so if you buy into my scenario, my narrative,
obviously it implies higher interest rates. I’ve got Federal Reserve
quantitative easing, winding down toward the end of the year,
coming to an end in early 2014. I’m a little bit more optimistic than
Economics in Person – Understanding the Slow Recovery
Mark Zandi, “Headwinds Fade, Tailwinds Develop”
19
the, sort of the mid-point of the Fed forecast, so I have the Fed
raising interest rates beginning in early 2015. I have normalization
of rates in the so-called equilibrium, say Federal Funds rate targets
about four percent; I get there by the end of 2016 or early 2017.
That’s—that’s my outlook. Of course, long term interest rates
26:05
rise faster than that, the bond market anticipates. So this is—I’m
just rounding here, but the ten-year bond is south of two, ends the
year two and a half, ends next year three and a half, normalizes
the sort of equilibrium ten-year yields is about five percent. We get
there, you know, some time late 2015, early 2016, and in all
likelihood, we overshoot. If we—if that’s kind of the scenario, we’re
good. You know, we’re OK. I mean, the rates are rising because the
economy’s doing better, we’re generating more jobs,
unemployment’s falling, everything’s—it does ding the housing
market a little bit, but, you know, it won't undermine it because
26:41
the job market will be fueled by the better—the housing market
will be fueled by the better job market. But the risk is that—and
the theory is sound and the empirical evidence that we have would
suggest that this is the way it should work. And if you look at what
happened after the end of QE1, QE2, you know, it’s—there are a
lot of moving parts there, and it’s hard to disentangle all the things
that are going on. But, you know, it suggestive of the idea that this
Economics in Person – Understanding the Slow Recovery
Mark Zandi, “Headwinds Fade, Tailwinds Develop”
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is the way interest rates should rise, in a slow, orderly way. But
the risk is, and the concern is out there in the world, is that
27:16
we got, this theory’s all wrong, and interest rates are going to rise a
lot faster than people anticipate, as bond investors are—they—
everyone knows, in the bond community, that the terminal interest
rate, ten-year bond, is five percent, so they may take it from two to
five in a lot—not over a three year period, but over, you know, a
three month period. And of course, if that were to happen, that
would be—that would be a significant problem for the economy. I-you know, that’s not my base line; I don’t think that’s the likely
scenario. But that is the concern among folks out there.
27:48
One last point about that. Even in my base line, there will be
financial stress as a result of that kind of rise in interest rates.
There always is. There will be some kind of financial event—it
probably won't be in the regulated banking system, just because
the stress test process is now accounting for this. The adverse
scenario in the stress test is exactly this interest rate scenario, so
the banking system should be well prepared for it. But the shadow
system is, in all likelihood, not, so even in my outlook of slowly
rising interest rates, I think we’re in store for some bumps along
the way.
28:28
I will end there, and you will be happy to know that I hit my 30
Economics in Person – Understanding the Slow Recovery
Mark Zandi, “Headwinds Fade, Tailwinds Develop”
minutes to the second, to the second. Thank you very much.
28:37
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