One of the speakers at this week's Big Picture Conference was David Rosenberg, the famously bearish chief economist of Canadian wealth management firm Gluskin-Sheff.
Rosenberg is often labeled a perma-bear, which is something he denied vehemently, but he definitely presented a glass-half-full view of the economy, using charts to argue that the U.S. will be facing demographic and debt-related headwinds for years to come.
According to Rosenberg — who jokingly put on a pair of rose-tinted glasses at the start of his presentation — the U.S. is at best halfway through the deleveraging. The stock market, he says, is only up by dint of Fed intervention, and that there are already signs that the latest bout of QE-Open Ended is not having the same effect as last time.
Regardless of what you think of him as an investor (he has clearly been too negative on equities since the bottom of the crisis) he is an extremely impressive economist, with a wealth of charts and historical datapoints to draw on.
His presentation was definitely a highlight of the conference, and everyone was blown away (not just by the presentation but also his stagemanship).
Big thanks to Gluskin-Sheff for giving us permission to run the entire feature.
Alfred E. Newman used to ask "What, me worry?" but it was never clear what he had to worry about.
On the other hand, Bernanke clearly worries about a lot. He has a lot on his mind.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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