"uncertainty" and the financial markets
for much of obama's tenure in office, coinciding with the lengthy recovery from the shrub-induced disaster that has been dubbed the "great recession", the financial market media (cnbc, most notably) have the whining endlessly about "uncertainty".
as someone in the financial industry, this has really baffled me. "uncertainty" is the norm in the business world, and, in particular, in the financial markets. sure, there are periods of greater and lesser uncertainty, and it's true that greater uncertainty can be damaging to business and to financial markets. investors like to have some level of confidence in their decisions, and business people need to be able to control or manage various risks. if something is too risky, they may avoid or at least delay it.
fine. i get that.
what i don't get is why they're whining about it now. why they've been whining about it for the last five years. i'm baffled. call the last five years miserable, call them achingly slow recovery, call the growth anemic, whatever. but "uncertain"? you've got to be kidding me! the last five years or so has been one of the the most smooth and predicable periods of economic performance since i don't know when. the fed has not only kept interest rates at the same rate for the entire time (essentially zero fed funds rate), but they made it clear for much of this period that an essentially zero percent fed funds rate would be a fixture for a very long time.
growth has been steady and within a pretty narrow band. inflation has been steady and in a pretty narrow band.
where the hell is all this "uncertainty" they keep whining about?
finally, with the latest fed iterations, they have had a tiny bit of uncertainty, were they going to raise rates in september (evidently not)? december? wait until 2016? but this level of uncertainty is pretty normal.
is the uncertainty about fiscal policy? hardly, no one expects major fiscal changes in a president's second term with a hopelessly gridlocked congress. call it pathetic, call it unproductive, but sorry, you can't call it "uncertain". again, it's be eminently predictable.
it's gotten to the point where it's hard for me to hear them complain about "uncertainty" and not hear that what they're really complaining about is not having republicans in control. i.e., "uncertainty" is code for "not getting the tax cuts and deregulation and lax enforcement that we dream about".
anyone else hear about this "uncertainty"? anyone else coming to a similar conclusion?
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