Submitted by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog,
Our economy is a mystery to almost everyone, including economists. Let me explain the way I see the situation:
(1) The big thing that pulls the economy forward is the time-shifting nature of debt and debt-like instruments.
While China has been busy de-escalating the recent diplomatic spat with president-elect Donald Trump, with Beijing going so far as to call Trump's ambassador to China, Terry Brandstad, an "old friend", in a less diplomatic-context it is busy pushing every bellicose, nationalist button it can find. In a Thursday editorial in Global Times, China said it should "significantly" increase military spending and produce more nuclear weapons as a response to US President-elect Donald Trump,
For the first time in two decades, according to a new study released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the life expectancy of the average American declined in 2015. Of course, with America's obesity epidemic spiraling out of control it probably shouldn't be a surprise that the occurrence of deaths related to America's number 1 killer, heart disease, is on the rise (see "FatLivesMatter: At Least 1 Out Of Every 5 People Are Obese In All 50 States").
That the market has soared since the Trump election on hopes of a fiscal stimulus splurge, sending the Dow Jones to just 300 points away from 20,000 is by now familiar to most. However, what few may realize is that even in a best case scenario, one where Congress does not throw up on Trump's vague stimulus plan which is expected to add as much as $5 trillion to the already soaring US debt, little if any of the actual spending and economic boost will take place in 2017.
From "the end of cash" to "Trump muzzling The Fed" to "Russia going on the warpath", Nomura unveils its unlikely-but-impactful grey swan scenarios for 2017...
As Nomura writes, while we would like to be able to predict black swans, by definition they are unpredictable. However, its close cousin, the grey swan, can be envisaged.