Gross: Fear And Poverty Will Clobber Returns For A Generation

Gross: Fear And Poverty Will Clobber Returns For A Generation
Here's the bond king himself:
Greed will come again. But for now, the trend is the other way and it promises to persist for a generation at a minimum.
The fact is that American consumers have suffered a collapse in wealth of at least $15 trillion since early 2007. Global estimates are less reliable, but certainly in multiples of that figure. And when potential spenders feel less rich by that much, the only model one can use to forecast the future is a commonsensical one that predicts higher savings, lower consumption, and an economic growth rate that staggers forward at a new normal closer to 2 as opposed to 3½%. There’s no magic in that number, and no model to back it up, just a lot of commonsense that says this is how people and economic societies behave when stressed and stretched to a near breaking point...
By Clusterstock