The Global Economic Trends Post-Election | Explorer

Where do you see things now that we're about a month in?

I would actually distinguish between what we actually see in the markets and the story that Wall Street is telling. The story that Wall Street is telling is all optimistic. We're going to have all this boosted economic growth. A lot of that seems to me to be based upon wishful thinking.

If you look at a chart of the stock market over the past 10 years, you see this big dip with the economic crisis and this huge rise. Then there's a little further legal at the top, which is what's happened since this election. The markets are not, in fact, building a huge optimism about growth. I think they are probably underweighting the chance of catastrophe.

There was another recent world event where a lot of people in the immediate aftermath said this is going to be an economic catastrophe. That hasn't quite happened yet, but it sounds like maybe what you're saying is be careful about getting too comfortable.

Well, actually, Rex, it was a huge shock to the European project. The consequences five years, ten years down the pike could be very severe. It did not put people with zero experience in charge of running the British government. It's people with long experience and competence. They talk to people who are reasonable.

But it's nothing at all like what happened here. There's this global moment that populism is having, right? We're hearing that certainly here, but also in Europe as well. That rise of populist leaders.

You wrote recently that that term is somewhat misattributed to Donald Trump, in the sense that in his first few weeks he has pretty much been siding economically with big business versus the individuals, the populace. We can mean a bunch of things, and normally when you say populism, you have in mind someone who is a factor on it, soak the rich, and do all kinds of stuff for the populace and doesn’t care about the elite.