Everything bubble

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Powell defends his first major monetary easing at a press conference, September 2019. A7R08527 (48755983757).jpg
Powell defends his first major monetary easing at a press conference, September 2019.

High up on his [President Biden's] list, will be dealing with the consequences of the biggest financial bubble in U.S. history. Why the biggest? Because it encompasses not just stocks but pretty much every other financial asset too. And for that, you may thank the Federal Reserve.

Contents

Richard Cookson, Bloomberg (February 2021) [2]

The "everything bubble" refers to the impact on the values of asset prices, including equities, real estate, bonds, many commodities, and cryptocurrencies, due to quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, and the Bank of Japan. [3] [4] The policy itself and the techniques of direct and indirect methods of quantitative easing used to execute it are sometimes referred to as the Fed put. [5] Modern monetary theory advocates the use of such tools, even in non-crisis periods, to create economic growth through asset price inflation. [a] [4] The term "everything bubble" first came in use during the chair of Janet Yellen, but it is most associated with the quantitative easing during the COVID-19 pandemic by Jerome Powell. [3] [6]

The everything bubble notably occurred despite the COVID-19 recession, the China–United States trade war, and political turmoil – leading to a realization that the bubble was a central bank creation, [3] [7] [8] with concerns on the independence and integrity of market pricing, [9] [8] [10] and on the Fed's impact on wealth inequality. [11] [12] [13]

In 2022, financial historian Edward Chancellor said "central banks' unsustainable policies have created an 'everything bubble', leaving the global economy with an inflation 'hangover'". [14] Rising inflation did ultimately force the Fed to tighten financial conditions during 2022 (i.e. raising interest rates and employing quantitative tightening), and in June 2022, The Wall Street Journal wrote that the Fed had "pricked the Everything Bubble". [15] In the same month, financial journalist Rana Foroohar told The New York Times , "Welcome to the End of the 'Everything Bubble'". [16] An article in The Guardian in October 2022 said that "In recent months, it has become clear that the “everything bubble” is over, pricked by the tightening of policy by central banks in response to higher inflation". [17] An article in The Economist in July 2023 noted that the everything bubble popped in 2022 but that asset prices were once again resilient. [18]

History

Origin

The term first appeared in 2014, during the chair of Janet Yellen, and reflected her strategy of applying prolonged monetary looseness (e.g. the Yellen put of continual low-interest rates and direct quantitative easing), as a method of boosting near-term economic growth via asset price inflation (a part of modern monetary theory (MMT) [a] ). [20] [21] [22] [23]

The term came to greater prominence during the subsequent chair of Jerome Powell, initially during Powell's first monetary easing in Q4 2019 (the Powell put), [24] [25] but more substantially during the 2020–2021 coronavirus pandemic, when Powell embraced asset bubbles to combat the financial impact of the pandemic. [26] [6] By early 2021, Powell had created the loosest financial conditions ever recorded, [27] and most US assets were simultaneously at levels of valuation that matched their highest individual levels in economic history. [28] [3] [29] Powell rejected the claim that US assets were definitively in a bubble, invoking the Fed model, [b] to assert that ultra-low yields justified higher asset prices. [31] [32] Powell also rejected criticism that the scale of the asset bubbles had widened US wealth inequality to levels not seen since the 1920s, [33] [34] on the basis that the asset bubbles would themselves promote job growth, thus reducing the inequality. [13] [35] [36] The contrast between the distress experienced by "Main Street" during the pandemic, and the economic boom experienced by "Wall Street", who had one of their most profitable years in history, was controversial, [37] [38] and earned Powell the title of Wall Street's Dr. Feelgood. [39]

Powell was supported by Congress, with speaker Nancy Pelosi saying in October 2020, "Well, let me just say that the number, I think, that is staggering is that we have more people unemployed and on unemployment benefits than any time in our country's history. We know that the Fed is shoring up the markets so that the stock market can do well. I don't complain about that, I want the market to do well." [40] [7] [41]

Peak in 2021

In February 2021, the Fed's Bullard said he did not see a bubble: "That's just normal investing". JamesBullard.jpg
In February 2021, the Fed's Bullard said he did not see a bubble: "That's just normal investing".

In early 2021, some market participants warned that Powell's everything bubble had reached dangerous levels. Investor Jeremy Grantham said, "All three of Powell's predecessors claimed that the asset prices they helped inflate in turn aided the economy through the wealth effect", before eventually collapsing. [43] [44] Investor Seth Klarman said that the Fed had "broken the market", and that "the market's usual role in price discovery had been suspended". [10] Economist Mohamed El-Erian said "you have such an enormous disconnect between fundamentals and valuations", and that the record highs in assets were due to the actions of the Fed and the ECB, clarifying "That is the reason why we've seen prices going from one record high to another despite completely changing narratives. Forget about the 'great reopening', the 'Trump trade' and all this other stuff". [8] The Financial Times warned that the inequality from Powell's K-shaped recovery could lead to political and social instability, saying: "The majority of people are suffering, amid a Great Gatsby-style boom at the top". [11]

Several commentators called the 2020–2021 market created by Powell as being the most speculative market ever seen, including CNBC host Jim Cramer who said: "You can't lose in that market", and "it's like a slot machine" that always pays out. "I've not seen this in my career". [45] Bloomberg said: "Animal spirits are famously running wild across Wall Street, but crunch the numbers and this bull market is even crazier than it seems" [46] ("Animal spirits" is a term popularized in the 1930s by economist John Maynard Keynes to describe the influence of human emotions on finance and investing). The extreme level of speculation led to the GameStop short squeeze in January 2021, the five-fold rise in the Goldman Sachs Non-Profitable Technology Index, [47] and the record rise in the Russell Microcap Index. [48] At the end of January 2021, The Wall Street Journal wrote that: "For once, everyone seems to agree: Much of the market looks like it's in a bubble", [49] while Goldman Sachs said that the S&P 500 was at or near its most expensive levels in history on most measures, with the forward EV/EBITDA breaking 17× for the first time. [50]

In February 2021, the Fed Governor James B. Bullard said that they did not see an asset bubble and would continue to apply a high level of monetary stimulus. [42] Bloomberg News wrote that Powell, in the final year of his first term, was afraid to tighten in case of a repeat of tightening mistakes in the fourth quarter of 2018. [51] The Financial Times warned US regulators to regard the experience of the 2015–2016 Chinese stock market turbulence, when monetary easing by the Chinese state in 2014 led to a bubble, but then a crash over 2015–2016, in Chinese markets. [52] In February 2021, the former head of the BOJ financial markets division warned that the BOJ should adjust the level of direct purchases it makes of Nikkei ETFs due to bubble concerns. [53] [c]

Popping of bubble in 2022

By early 2022, rising inflation forced Powell, and latterly other central banks, to significantly tighten financial conditions including raising interest rates and quantitative tightening (the opposite of quantitative easing), which led to a synchronized fall across most asset prices (i.e. the opposite effect to the 'everything bubble'). [55] In May 2022, financial historian Edward Chancellor told Fortune that "central banks' unsustainable policies have created an 'everything bubble', leaving the global economy with an inflation 'hangover'". [14] Chancellor separately noted to Reuters, "If ultralow interest rates were responsible for inflating an 'everything bubble', it follows that everything – well, almost everything – is at risk from rising rates". [56] In June 2022, James Mackintosh of The Wall Street Journal wrote that the Fed had "pricked the Everything Bubble", [15] while in the same month the financial journalist Rana Foroohar told the New York Times, "Welcome to the End of the 'Everything Bubble'". [16]

Asset valuations at record levels

The post-2020 period of the everything bubble produced several simultaneous US records/near-records for extreme levels in a diverse range of asset valuation and financial speculation metrics:

General

Bonds

Equities

Housing

Median housing price by metro area
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See also: 2000s United States housing bubble Median housing price by metro area.webp
Median housing price by metro area

Cryptocurrencies

SPACs

Commodities

Alleged examples

As well as the above asset-level records, several assets with extreme valuations and extraordinary price increases were identified as being emblematic of the everything bubble: [74]

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 MMT asserts that excessive asset price inflation will lead to an increase in real price inflation, which will lead to an increase in yields, and correspondingly reduce the asset price inflation (i.e. a self-stabilizing system). [4] Critics say that most historical periods of excessive asset price inflation did not produce such self-stabilization, but instead produced financial collapse and real price deflation (e.g. post-1920s America, post-1990 Japan, and post-2008 Europe); in other cases, the inflation was not controllable, also leading to a financial collapse (e.g. the 1970s in the United States). [4] [19]
  2. The Fed model is a disputed form of equity valuation which has been challenged by academics, and particularly at very low yields. [30] A notable example is post-1990s Japan when ultra-low yields did not stop Japanese equity valuations from dropping substantially for decades, only stopping when the Bank of Japan started directly buying equities to support their price. [19]
  3. The Bank of Japan is the largest owner of Japanese shares through direct daily purchases of Nikkei ETFs, leading to questions over the integrity of the pricing of Japanese securities, and their long-term viability. [54]

References

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Further reading