저자: MohamedEl-Erian · 외국인
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AI 관련 신용 사고(바퀴벌레)는 있겠지만 시스템 충격은 아니라고 봄. 저소득층 소비 여력 약화와 고금리 차환 부담이 주요 우려이며, 연준은 독립성을 지키되 구조개혁(물가목표 범위화, 외부위원 도입)이 필요하다고 주장. AI는 노동 대체보다 노동 강화 관점이 중요하며, 현재 AI 주식은 합리적 거품으로 일부 손실은 불가피하다고 진단.
다듬은 글
Welcome to Yahoo Finance Invest. The global economy is rapidly evolving from shifting monetary policy to inflation pressures and structural changes thanks to technology. In the backdrop, record setting markets that are sparking fears of a correction or even worse. Joining me now is Muhammad Alan, Alian's chief economic adviser.
Muhammad, a real treat to have you here at Invest. Thank you for always making time for us. Let's start out of the block here on cockroaches. Uh there's a lot of talk on Wall Street right now on cockroaches and this essentially is risks coming out of various places and it's hard to stop them. What say you?
Where's the next I guess economic cockroach to be found? So let me just say we will have cockroaches but not termites. And this is a fundamental differentiation. Cockroaches are unpleasant. They come in groups but they don't eat away at the integrity of the system. Termites eat away at the integrity of the foundation.
So why are we going to have cockroaches? We're coming from a period where people have stretched really far for additional returns. They have been um encouraged to do so by a strong economy by very loose financial conditions and some people went beyond their comfort zone and beyond their ability to do due diligence.
So I don't think we should be surprised that we will have these accidents, these credit accidents. We'll have some economic accidents, but I don't think we're going to have any systemic shock. That is of course a good thing. And when you mention potential economic accidents, what keeps you up at night?
Well, what are you most concerned about for 2026? So what used to keep me up was a trade war, but the US has been able to impose higher tariffs without triggering much retaliation. So that doesn't keep me up as it used to. What does keep me up is what's happening at the lower ends of the income distribution for households where there is significant pressure.
And what keeps me up is the amount of debt that has to be refinanced at higher interest rates. So those two things are potential areas of pressure which would be made worse if we get a policy mistake. Mohammed, you bring up a really great point. It's something I've been thinking on very deeply of late.
We've seen tremendous wealth created in the market this year and the bull market has continued, but we're not seeing I guess this goes to your point. We're not seeing it translate into that average US household, that lower income uh consumer. Is that cohort of the US, are they in a recession? They're near recession and they are spreading this concern about affordability, which is not just an economic issue, it's a social and political issue.
Um the first shock to affordability was of course the 2021 2022 inflation shock, but that was offset, Brian, by income transfers. Now we have inflation stuck at 3%. We have insecurity about future income. Um the challenger report showed you that layoffs were surging. AI will change the workplace. And in addition, we have high debt and credit cards that have been maxed out.
So there is real concern on the bottom bit of what people call the K-shaped economy. And this is not isolated concern. If the lower household incomes stop spending, not because they're not they don't want to spend, but they're not able to spend, that will contaminate upwards for the economy as a whole.
So, you think that pressure on the low end. So, the highincome consumer, the person that is exposed to the markets, they've enjoyed a good year, they're not immune to what's happening on the low end. Okay. So, they're doing fine. They're doing fine from an income perspective. They're doing fine from a wealth perspective.
Um, so I'm not worried about middle to upper class. I am worried about lower income households and their ability to continue to navigate this uncertain environment. How do we bridge this gap? Because if you listen to the current administration, Muhammad, they are talking president has floated a potential $2,000 dividend.
There's been interest in that. Uh the the one big beautiful bill was passed. more jobs are being created in the US in terms of uh tech companies building out AI data centers like how do you bridge that gap between what's happening on the high end and low end. Um so they also you could have added to that list that they've moved on some very sensitive prices um gasoline being one and the other one being some pharmaceuticals.
So they they are taking steps Brian but this has been long in the making. This is not something that is recent and therefore it is deeprooted. It is made more complex by two other issues. One is the difference between real and perceived and the other one is the difference between relative and absolute.
So it is a really complicated issue and if you go through it the bottom line is it will take years of effort both on the income side and the price side to get us out of this situations. I want to leave enough time in this conversation Muhammad because you are a uh known as a foremost thinker on Federal Reserve policy and is quite been quite the year for all things Federal Reserve.
Of course attacks from the Trump administration we're coming up on the end of Chair Pal's tenure. Where is your head at as it pertains to the Fed in 2026? What is a new Fed chair? What will they bring? And where do you see the ultimate endgame for rate cuts this cycle? What a new share will inherit is a divided Fed.
And it's divided by two things. One is whether they are sensitive to the employment side of the dual mandate or to the inflation side of the dual mandate. Both are flashing yellow right now. So it does matter where your bias is and what we see is that people are on both sides of this divide. The second thing that that will inherit is a division between people who are totally comfortable being backward-looking so-called data dependent and those who realize they also need to be forwardlooking.
They need to have a strategic view of the economy and in particular Brian of something you've been talking about a lot AI and its impact on productivity and growth. So what a new chair has to bring is a unifying narrative and I think that narrative has to be forwardlooking and the new chair has to have a view as to what the future economy looks like.
I am a great believer as you know in the promise of AI. If we get diffusion right, we will have a significant productivity increase and as a result, monetary policy will be able to be looser than it would otherwise have been. Do you view the the the attacks on the Fed and and what it does for the administration?
Is that has that will that leave lasting damage on this institution? And if you do think that's the case, what does that damage even mean to markets? So I believe deeply in the independence of the Fed deeply that I think a Fed with policy autonomy is the best thing we can have. But I also believe as you know that this Fed went to sleep.
There are many areas of reform that require attention. There are many best practices that from the rest of the world that we should be looking at more seriously and there's lots of hard questions that we need to ask including what is the right inflation target in a structurally changing economy. So the good news is you're starting to hear debate from within the Fed.
You've had two federal officials as you know come out and saying maybe we should have a range for inflation our inflation target not a point estimate. You've had another one come up saying we target the wrong intermediate policy variable. So I'm encouraged by the fact that the Fed itself is now finally talking about reforms and that is something that if you look at the five candidates on the short list all of them understand that you need to reform the way the Fed operates otherwise the Fed will continue to be behind.
And if you look at the recent years, not only have we had decisions that were too late, but we've had a culture issue. We've had five officials that were accused of irregularities. So I think it's really important to reform this Fed. And what this political pressure has done is it has made certain Fed official realize that it's better to reform from the inside than to have it imposed on you.
the the five contenders you mentioned on the short list uh for the next Fed share, do you have confidence that they will keep the Fed independent? I do. Um I think all of them understand the history of central banking. They understand the importance of keeping the Fed independent, but they also understand that an independent Fed needs to be an accountable Fed and an independent Fed needs to reform itself to keep up with changes.
It is striking to me, Brian, that we don't have external members serving of the on the FOMC like the Bank of England does. So, we end up with group think and that group think ends up by the Fed being behind. We saw that in 202122 and we've seen it again this year. So, there are things that can be done and should be done.
And I think that all five realize that an independent Fed is critical, but it doesn't mean a Fed that goes to sleep on how it operates. Do you think the 2% inflation target should be scrapped? I don't think it should be scrapped. I think it should be changed. I have been of the view that a better inflation target is a range, not a point estimate.
A point estimate suggests precision that is elusive. Second, that range should be higher than 2%. It should be the 2 1/2 to 3%. And what is undeniable is that we are at a stable 3% inflation and that hasn't in any way unanchored inflation expectations. Out of the five candidates, Muhammad, uh look, I I agree with you.
These are incredibly qualified uh people. Of course, shout out Rick Reer, uh friend of Yahoo Finance. We all know him very well. Um, what do you think their their biggest problem they will have to solve that that that that first six months on the job of leading the Federal Reserve after a long tenure like Jerome Pal has had?
Like what do they need to get right right out of the box? Shifting the Fed from a from an excessively data dependent backward-looking institution that is reactive to one that has the confidence to take a strategic view and be proactive. That is going to be a major change that is really needed has been needed for a while and that hasn't happened on the chat pile.
I wanted to get back to what you mentioned on AI and productivity. You could see AI chatbots at least for now this this current wave of innovation is driving is already starting to drive a lot of productivity. How much of a risk is it to jobs around the world? How concerned are you? I'm concerned mainly because of the corporate mindset, Brian.
Um, if you look at the promise of AI, there is a labor displacement risk and there's a massive labor enhancing opportunity. And the worry I have that with the exception of a few companies, the mindset right now in corporate America is about cost minimization. AI is viewed as cost a cost minimizer. What AI really is is an enabler, a productivity enabler that gets there from better work and more work.
And and I worry a little bit that the mindset is too focused right now on cost minimization because the real promise of AI is not labor displacement, it's labor enhancement. I I told myself coming into this, Muhammad, I didn't want to be that guy that asked you about a bubble. I just think it it it doesn't capture the nuance it deserves.
So let me if I can frame a little more academically. How concerned are you that AI stocks are grossly overvalued? So So let me share the work that I've been doing with Mike Spence, a friend and a Nobel Prize winner. We believe that we are in a rational bubble. So yes, there are elements of a bubble and there's three elements in particular of this bubble.
First, the frontier, the found those working on foundational models, not all of them are going to succeed and yet all of them are attracting significant investment. Second, diffusion isn't being talked about enough. Diffusion means getting AI into the workplace in a in a in an orderly fashion, in a comprehensive fashion.
We don't have a diffusion policy so far. Other countries, China does, UAE does, we haven't. We've got to get diffusion right. Otherwise, the promise of AI is not going to be fully realized. And then you and I remember the dot era. We remember companies simply putting a label on what they do and attracting investment.
Well, that label today is AI. So there are elements of a bubble which means that people will end up with losses. But the aggregate value of what's being created is significant and therefore the rationality part comes in Brian. It makes sense to take a venture capital approach to AI. The payoff is so large that it is rational to have multiple investments and to overinvest.
So the good news is that it's a construct that will make us more innovative, more competitive. The bad news is there will be tears, there will be losses because elements of it are elements of a bubble. Uh I wanted to leave invest viewers uh thinking with one deep thought and uh let me come at you with this question Muhammad before we uh get going here.
If you were writing a short message to to policy makers right now, one key action they should take, what would it be and why? That we realize that our future is going to be at the tales of distribution, not in the belly. You know, for a long time we grew up with unifying themes, the Washington consensus, globalization.
We are now living in a world of fragmentation in a world that structurally changes. And what happens at the tales are going to determine where we end up. So don't get fooled by a normal distribution, a bell-shaped distribution. Realize we're in a multimodal world. Always a treat to get some time with you.
Uh I always enjoy I always enjoy our conversations. Muhammad Alan Alian chief economic adviser. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks for joining us here at Inves. We appreciate it.
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