Stock markets are not only ignoring the obvious threats, but seem imbued with extreme optimism. In the autumn of 1929, Irving Fisher, one of the greatest American economists, stated: “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” This turned out to be one of the most incorrect forecasts ever made: in short order, US and global stock markets were hit by the Great Crash, which was followed by the Great Depression. Maybe markets were in some sense “right” before the crash and wrong after it. But who cared? For investors and the hundreds of millions of people across the world whose lives were upended by the disaster, the gods of the stock market had failed for a generation. Why might this story be relevant today? The answer is that the valuation of US stocks is even higher today than in September 1929. The first global financial crisis after the disaster of the 1930s in 2007-09: the easy monetary — and relaxed regulatory — policies adopted after the stoc...
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