Day: January 15, 2013

Late in 2008 and in early 2009, a group of what we like to call “brilliant pessimists” hit the airwaves with their economic theories. The prognosticators’ vision of the future was and is predicated on the history of similar situations and the mathematical realities of the huge debt overhang from the prior ten years of profligate economic behavior. They put very effective names on their visions like “new normal” and “seven lean years”. They marketed their visions incredibly well to the point of shaming anyone who might disagree with their theories. Their beliefs quickly became accepted as “well known facts” and filtered into the asset allocation of almost every well researched asset allocation portfolio.