Companies and investors are starting to finalise their plans for the coming year. Many are assuming that the global economy will grow by 3% – 3.5%, and are setting targets on the basis of “business as usual”. This has been a reasonable assumption for the past 25 years, as the chart confirms for the US economy:
Since then, the central banks have taken over from the Boomers as the engine of growth. They cut interest rates after the 2001 recession, deliberately pumping up the housing and auto markets to stimulate growth. And since the 2008 financial crisis, they have focused on supporting stock markets, believing this will return the economy to stable growth:
In total, the Fed has added $3.8tn to its balance sheet since 2009, whilst China, the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan added nearly $30tn of their own stimulus. Effectively, they ensured that credit was freely available to anyone with a pulse, and that the cost of borrowing was very close to zero. As a result, debt has soared and credit quality collapsed. One statistic tells the story:
