depends on who you listen to, to form your own opinion...plus your attitude towards the subject...and your own likes and dislikes...(the emotional side, processes factored in) I am not sure where or why some posters here think interest rates will rise again....(unless they believe swan and stevens will have those jobs for years to come, and then make massive errors as in raising rates again, they are both gone, imo)
extracts from the article... Charlie Munger and Bill Gross Lowered sights, new normal....
This includes negative real earnings growth for stocks and negative real short-term interest rates, perhaps for seven years
Munger’s advice on low expectations shouldn’t need underlining, but New York’s mayor Michael Bloomberg told a New York state legislator, when discussing funding of pension schemes earlier this year : “If somebody offers you a guaranteed 7 per cent on your money for the rest of your life, take it – and just make sure the guy’s name isn’t Madoff.”
But that 7 per cent return, which is what many US investors such as pension funds are assuming as a minimum return, looks unlikely in the new investment world, says PIMCO’s legendary bond investor, Bill Gross. He’s not sure a 7 per cent return is possible in what PIMCO calls the “new normal”, with negative real interest rates on Treasury bonds.
Not to mention whether sovereign nations can guarantee return of capital – let alone a return which might match 7 per cent in nominal terms. An authentic debt crisis – which is what the world is now experiencing – can only be ultimately cured in two ways: one, default on it, or two, print more money in order to inflate it away,” he says.
Both those courses of action, Gross adds, “are simply poison for bond and stock holders which is why 7 per cent returns –guaranteed or not – are so comical
