So much for appearances. The truth is we live in an age of pseudoscience. The central banks’ forecasting models have failed to predict the future. Quantitative easing and zero per cent interest rates — policy centrepieces of the post-2008 era — have failed to restore what we used to call prosperity.
The phenomenon goes further — much further. Be it the US Federal Reserve, the People’s Bank of China, the Bank of Japan or the ECB, central bankers’ first financial-markets objective is not the integrity of prices and exchange rates. It is rather crisis prevention — to keep the bouncing bond and stock market balls moving in their sanctioned orbits. (For an individual to fix Libor is a crime. For a central bank to suppress European bond yields is an act of financial statesmanship.)
A team led by Ben Whipple at the University of Georgia sifted through 130,000 earnings announcements US companies filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the 10 years till 2013. They found a persistent rise in unorthodox reporting. In 2003, 22 per cent of the filings featured "pro forma", non-GAAP measures of financial performance. By 2013, 49 per cent did. Rising share prices create a demand for the earnings with which to rationalise them.
Expongo una actualización del índice de Buffett, que demuestra que la bolsa está en niveles siderales respecto a la economía real. No llega al desmadre de 2000 -una crisis que se resolvió sin grandes quebrantos- pero no muy lejos de aquel nivel.
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