Nobody really knows what the market is going to do, but it sure looks like we are going to have a lot more volatility.
I think what the Fed fears is that, if Donald Trump gets big tax cuts and big spending increases that take effect right now, when the economy is close to full employment, they will have to raise rates more rapidly.
If the government can't get the economy moving again, they have a lot of fundamental problems.
I think it's hard to understand in economics. It's easier to understand on psychology.It's a kind of panic or a sense that the world economy is just not in as good shape as we thought and so everybody is chasing everybody else.
The only reason you would want your currency to fall, if you could control it, is in order to get more exports.
I think the Chinese are really amateurs when it comes to running markets.
The stock market was relieved that the Fed didn't sound tougher, and the stock market seems to figure that everything they like about Donald Trump will come true, and everything they're afraid of about Donald Trump will not come true.
I think it was seen as a symptom that the Chinese leadership may be really scared about their economy.Why would you want to depend more on exports if you're a country that has a stated policy of relying less on exports and more on consumer spending, domestic spending?
I think the one thing that's going on here is that people are saying, uh-oh, the Chinese economy might be slowing more than we thought and the government is having a hard time stimulating it again.
I think that the feel that maybe China is slowing down means it will be buying less from Africa and Latin America. That means Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola will sell less in Latin America and Africa. And so it is definitely related.
There is also a concern that there is a lack of demand of oil. And so when commodity prices fall, it's good if you happen to be a consumer, but it's sometimes seen as symptom of a weakening economy.
I think oil prices are down for two reasons. One is, there is a lot of supply. There is a lot of supply because the U.S. now produces a lot of oil and there is a lot of supply because the Saudis seem to want to produce a lot of oil, maybe to punish the Iranians and the Russians.
China's stock market is not very big. And yet when stock market has a bad day in China, it seems, Europe has a bad day and then we have a bad day.
People have put a lot of faith in the government's ability to get growth going in China. People have this, what I think, illusion that there are six people in China who really have their hand on every button. And what we're learning is, it's a very big economy and they're not that good at it.
It may be that the U.S. stock market starts to rise if people think it's gone far enough.
At some point, people may decide that the U.S. stock market has fallen enough. After all, the U.S. economy seems to be getting better, that what happens in China is not going to have that devastating effect on car sales here or how many people buy Apple phones or what happens at - how many people shop at Wal-Mart.
There is the fact that - people have had a lot of confidence that the Chinese leadership could fix what is wrong with their economy so it wouldn't have ripple effects around the world. I think that confidence is being shaken by how difficult it is for them to manage their stock market and their currency.
Chinese don't really believe in markets. They like stability, they like control.
If you don't have a set of principles that you can explain for what you are doing, then how can anybody know what you're going to do next?
