Should-Read: *Anatole Kaletsky *: The Market Dogs That Didn’t Bark

Should-Read: *Anatole Kaletsky *: The Market Dogs That Didn’t Bark: “The bond market’s complacency about US interest rates and inflation may be surprising… [may] turn out to be an expensive mistake… but it is a fact…

…The 30-year US bond yield is still only 3.2% – exactly where it was a year ago and in most of 2015 and 2016. It is almost a full percentage point lower than in 2013 and two full points below the level in 2007…. The bond market believes that the long-term outlook for growth and inflation is more or less the same as it was in the period from 2015 until early last year – and much weaker than it was a decade ago…. For the moment, however, the behavior of long-term US interest rates implies an almost unshakeable confidence among investors that inflation will never again become a serious threat, despite President Donald Trump’s decision to slash taxes, boost government spending, and abandon deficit limits in a US economy already nearing full employment.

This points our investigation toward the third dog that didn’t bark. Currencies were almost completely unmoved by the stock-market commotion. This quiescence makes sense: If investors are unperturbed by inflationary pressures in the US economy, they can surely be much more confident about the rest of the world. In Europe, Japan, and many emerging markets, cyclical upswings are more recent, inflation is lower, and economic management is sounder than in the US. The implication is obvious: The global expansion and bull market will continue, but leadership will move from America to the more promising economies of Europe, Japan, and the emerging world.