저자: JeremySiegel · 외국인
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그린스펀 별세 후 유산 평가: 1990년대 생산성 호황 대응과 닷컴 버블 경고는 높이 평가하나, 2008년 금융위기 예측 실패는 큰 오점으로 지적. 워시 연준의장 첫 FOMC는 금리 동결, 워시가 5개 위원회 구성·절차 개편을 예고(변경은 2027년 초). 시차 지연 지표 대신 실시간 시장 데이터 반영이 필요하다고 주장. 유가가 약 73달러로 내려오며 하반기 금리 인상 가능성은 낮다고 전망, 단 호르무즈 재봉쇄 등 전쟁 재개는 배제 불가. 브렉시트 10년: 경제통합 후퇴는 과도했다고 보나 런던은 금융중심지로 건재.
다듬은 글
And always great to have a chance to speak with Wharton Emeritus Professor Jeremy Segal, who is also a Senior Financial Advisor at WisdomTree. Jeremy, great to have you with us, and I guess let's start out with Alan Greenspan, who just recently passed away. Give us your thoughts on his legacy and his place in U.S.
history. Yeah, truly amazing at the age of 100, and I mean, he was sharp almost to the very end. And wow, what a life. I mean, an appreciation for, I mean, he lived through all the ups and downs, all the recessions, all the inflations that meant for many of us, we're just reading books. But I remember, because I'm not as old as him, 20 years younger, but you know, his scope is just amazing.
His forecasting ability was the best I think of any fad. Now, we're all very limited, let's face it. Anyone's forecasting ability in the economy is limited. But Townsend Greenspan, which is he, for me, was one of the most successful for a long time. I mean, his legacy in terms of early on, you know, recognizing that the burst of productivity that we saw at the end of the 1990s, would allow him to keep interest rates lower for longer, was certainly good.
He did warn about the bubble in the economy, we did have that dot-com bubble, and then we had a short recession afterwards. But I mean, his span of first Council of Economic Advisors, then Fed Chair is quite amazing. The big blemish, and we have to, we must address it, was clearly he missed the great financial crisis.
And now he was not chairman during the great financial crisis. You know, he handed it off to Ben Bernanke right before that. But he missed it. And he admitted before Congress that he missed it. And he actually admitted that it was probably one of the biggest shocks of his life, that these firms would have loaded themselves up with such risky bets.
And that really shook some of his faith in some aspects of free market capitalism, of which he was a big supporter, as we know. Because didn't he say also, in understanding that he missed it, that his belief was that the banking system would kind of police itself, correct? Yeah, well, he thought that, you know, this and that, you know, you think free markets police themselves, and he believes in free markets, and they didn't.
I mean, you know, I've written extensively on what caused it. A lot of it was the misrating of these mortgage bonds, and then you do it, I do it, everyone does it. And, you know, it was just a sequence of events that, you know, was like the perfect storm. Each one of them was a small probability, but it did happen.
But nonetheless, he, you know, he did not look at the balance sheets of these banks, because let me look at, you take a look at Lehman Brothers, I mean, this is a firm that existed, you know, for 150 years, through depressions and through crises that were far worse, and then finds itself in a position of, you know, liquidation is shocking.
I mean, if you survived the Great Depression in the 1930s, which Lehman Brothers did, and many other crises that were actually far worse than the great financial crisis that we had in 2008-9, you know, you realize that, you know, the game had changed, and we can discuss why, but you had faith in them doing the right thing, as they had done for 150 years, but they did not do them.
We've obviously talked a little bit about Alan Greenspan. Let me switch gears and talk about Kevin Warsh. The first FOMC meeting with Warsh as the Fed chair just completed. No move on rates, but that's not a surprise, I think, to anybody. What were your thoughts, though, on some of the comments by Warsh after the fact?
Yeah, I liked his news conference. I thought he was very deftly done, very well done. Let me combine that a little bit with current view. One of the things that he's setting up five commissions, and that's going to take to the end of the year. There's going to be no change in procedure until the end of the year.
Then they're going to discuss it, and changes in procedure will happen in early 27. So, you know, as far as that's concerned. One of the things that he addressed, which is something I've always addressed, is that the Fed is always looking at backward-looking indicators. For instance, we're going to get the PCE deflator later this week, and that's going to be for the month of May.
We're going to look year over year, so that's 12 months before. You need to be more forward-looking. Part of the things he talked about, we need more indicators that are much more current. Let me address how important that is. We know that the dot plot was very aggressive that he showed with almost half the FOMC members.
I think half of them thinking at least one rise this year. But that was based before oil dropped to $73 a barrel, which it is as we're recording. This is even way below what I thought would happen. Prices are coming down. In my opinion, unless the war starts again, unless we can't rule out any sort of, you know, this has been an up-and-down procedure, but I'm not going to rule it out with any certainty.
But if the Hormuz largely remains open and oil prices come down and other prices are coming down the way they are, I don't see any way that Warsh can really raise rates in the second half of this year. I mean, it could. Not necessarily lower them because we're going to have to see core go down, but raise them I think may not happen if we keep oil down and other commis down in the area that they are right today as we speak.
You know, it's interesting when in reading and watching some of his comments, the words price stability were used, you know, by Warsh quite a bit. And so between that and I guess a lot of the commentary about easy money days being over is that we truly are looking at maybe a next kind of generation of the Fed.
You mentioned about the commissions that he's putting together, and we'll see action on that next year, that we are kind of transitioning into what the next Fed is going to look like. Yeah, and the next Fed, I mean, I think the dot plots are going to be very reformed, even the SEP, which is Survey of Economic Projections.
At this point, he didn't mark a difference in the news conferences before. Powell, it used to be only on the quarterly, not on all eight of them. He didn't signal that, but that could also change. We already saw one change, and that was that the statement was dramatically shorter than it had been in the past.
And I approve that. A lot of the other was just filler and repeat and not really all that necessary. Although his news conference was almost as long as Powell's, not quite, but it's his first news conference, so I think he wanted to stay on. So there's going to be changes. How much are really going to be important about the way...
I think the most important is getting forward-looking data and building that in, reforming the dot plot. We don't see if it's anywhere near far ahead to put down those dots the way it is. It's got to be modified dramatically. And I think he also is going to examine how important the dot plot is versus the balance sheet.
This is another factor. But that again, all those factors, these are not really going to be decided until 2027. But what are some of the things that he is probably going to have to consider when you're thinking about getting the right data subsets looking forward so that we can truly have an understanding of what the economy is at this moment in time, rather than, as we talked about before, looking back 30 days or longer than that?
Yeah, I mean, there are a number of different data sets that are much more current, taken from online prices and market prices and commodity prices that move every day, that move every hour, and other projections of what happens even in used cars prices and others. We need to have more of the current market projections that are forward-looking.
And for instance, the year-over-year now is going to include... I mean, until the oil prices come down, the big bump that the oil prices and related come, but that is definitely going to start coming down. I mean, oil prices and even gasoline prices, oil is within 20% of the pre-war level. And if gasoline is within 20% of the pre-war level, which is three, and now that we're talking about 350 or 340 actually, I mean, so as a result, there really could be a big decline.
And we got to take those into account rather than just say, oh, we're waiting for the PCE deflator, which is already two months old and all the rest. I think he wants more current market-determined data. But again, let's face it, CPI still is CPI and social security and billions of dollars of contracts, labor and otherwise are on the CPI.
So we're not giving up that. There's a lot of talk about him moving to a trim mean, another mean and all that. That will be discussed and analyzed. I'm not as enthusiastic about some of those other ones because they still are based on somewhat backward looking data, but nonetheless, a whole array of different indexes need to be monitored.
One last thing to discuss with you, Jeremy, this popped up on my radar the other day. It's been a decade since Brexit. And a lot of people thought that that was going to be the be all end all for the UK. It's been a decade. What were your thoughts back then when it occurred? And how have you kind of viewed the last decade?
Well, I like economic integration. I think it was too heavy handed. And there was a lot of regulations that were sort of not as necessary. There's a lot of debate. I mean, I see specials coming out. Some experts say GDP in Britain is eight percent lower. A recent poll says if they were to vote today by a narrow margin, they would say, let us stay in it.
However, at the same time, we get The Economist magazine in Britain and the premier finance economic magazine from Britain says that everyone thought London would be dead. London is not dead. And London is a financial center. You know, people said Paris was going to take over. Paris is not taking over.
And and for Frankfurt, is that taking over Berlin, I would say now? I mean, so in a way, London has maintained a lot of financial heft, although clearly, you know, that the trade agreements are far more complicated now than they were. Jeremy, always great to talk to you. Thanks very much for your time.
Thank you, Dan. See you next time. You got it. Professor Emeritus here at the Wharton School, Jeremy Siegel.
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