On July 1, this officially becomes the longest recovery in U.S. history—ten years or 120 months, matching the expansion of 1991.
It's been quite a ride. According to Steve Rattner, who manages money for Michael Bloomberg and spoke at the Aspen Ideas Festival this week, economists call it the 3/3/3 expansion: 3 percent growth, 3 percent unemployment, and 3 percent wage increases. During the last ten years, there have only been two quarters with negative growth.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate peaked at 10 percent and is now at 3.6 percent. Rattner says it would be even lower if Americans were more willing to relocate for jobs. The average net worth of households is at an all-time high. Consumer confidence is the highest it's been since the dot com bubble in the 1990's. Inflation is low—some economists argue that it's too low—hovering below 2 percent. Or to use the metric many Americans use, at the depth of the 2008/9 recession, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped below 6,500 in March 2009. Recently it closed over 26,500, an increase of over 300 percent.
The real question is how much longer this can go on, and what happens when it stops. No one knows, of course, but there's nothing wrong with educated guesses. So I spoke to large investors as well as executives and board members of financial institutions—in a word, the pros, the ones who spend their days watching a bank of screens with numbers and charts scrolling by and who, if they don't get it right, find themselves out of work. None of them wanted me to use their names. Two agreed to talk off the record, then even backed out from that. The reason for their nervousness in a moment.
https://www.newsweek.com/us-economic-recovery-now-longest-ever-so-why-are-experts-so-nervous-1446618
It's been quite a ride. According to Steve Rattner, who manages money for Michael Bloomberg and spoke at the Aspen Ideas Festival this week, economists call it the 3/3/3 expansion: 3 percent growth, 3 percent unemployment, and 3 percent wage increases. During the last ten years, there have only been two quarters with negative growth.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate peaked at 10 percent and is now at 3.6 percent. Rattner says it would be even lower if Americans were more willing to relocate for jobs. The average net worth of households is at an all-time high. Consumer confidence is the highest it's been since the dot com bubble in the 1990's. Inflation is low—some economists argue that it's too low—hovering below 2 percent. Or to use the metric many Americans use, at the depth of the 2008/9 recession, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped below 6,500 in March 2009. Recently it closed over 26,500, an increase of over 300 percent.
The real question is how much longer this can go on, and what happens when it stops. No one knows, of course, but there's nothing wrong with educated guesses. So I spoke to large investors as well as executives and board members of financial institutions—in a word, the pros, the ones who spend their days watching a bank of screens with numbers and charts scrolling by and who, if they don't get it right, find themselves out of work. None of them wanted me to use their names. Two agreed to talk off the record, then even backed out from that. The reason for their nervousness in a moment.
https://www.newsweek.com/us-economic-recovery-now-longest-ever-so-why-are-experts-so-nervous-1446618