No economic model would have predicted stocks would be at all-time highs and credit spreads would be very narrow after the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate by 5.25 percentage points since early 2022. Yet, that is exactly what has happened.
The Fed seems ready to declare victory in its fight against inflation, but the outperformance of highly speculative investments suggests that even such a sharp increase in interest rates hasn’t been a big enough mop to soak up the excess liquidity sloshing around the financial markets.
Central banks still don’t seem to understand that financial bubbles are sources of future real asset inflation. Bubbles misallocate capital within an economy to unneeded assets (cryptocurrencies and meme stocks, perhaps?). And capital doesn’t flow to productivity-enhancing investment. Indeed, the US consumer price index finally peaked at 5.6 per cent subsequent to the technology bubble in 2008.