Print PageJeremy Siegel Interviews Janet Yellen on “Behind the Markets”
Professor Jeremy Siegel had the opportunity to interview Janet Yellen live at the University of Pennsylvania last week, and a recording of their conversation was released on our “Behind the Markets” podcast.
Some observations from their discussion:
Yellen believes we are running out of slack in the labor market and that the U.S. economy cannot continue to have job growth of 180,000 to 200,000 a month without putting more pressure on the labor market. She suggested that there may be a tiny bit of slack in the prime-age male participation rate, but overall, our natural rate of employment growth should be 80,000 to 120,000. Yellen further sees the bounce in the participation rate in last month’s employment report as temporary and unsustainable. This big-picture worldview is what leads to the three to four quarter-point interest rate hikes that many are factoring in for 2018, and nothing Yellen said suggests any hesitation on the Federal Reserve (Fed) embarking on this course.
Yellen is quite concerned about long-term deficits, and she worries that fiscal spending is out of control. This could be compounded by worries about the Fed running off its balance sheet, which could lead to a spiraling of interest rates.
Regarding productivity, Yellen is not a pessimist in the long run, but she doesn’t know why productivity growth has been so low in recent years.
Siegel asked Yellen about stock prices, and she did think they were high but not unusually so given the low-interest-rate scenario. She did say that commercial real estate is high, but this judgment also ties into the long-run view of the appropriate level of interest rates.
All in all, it was a great conversation and an honor for Professor Siegel to be the first to interview Yellen outside of Washington since she stepped down as chair of the Fed.
You can listen to the full conversation at the podcast link below.
Share & Comment
Popular Posts
Categories
Related Links
Jeremy J. Siegel, WisdomTree’s Senior Economist, is the Emeritus Professor of Finance at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Siegel has written and lectured extensively about the economy and financial markets and is a regular contributor to the financial news media. In 1994, he received the highest teaching rating in a ranking of business school professors conducted by BusinessWeek magazine. His book Stocks for the Long Run was named by The Washington Post as one of the 10 best investment books of all time. His second book, The Future for Investors, was a bestseller, and his research on dividend investment strategies in that book coincided with WisdomTree’s development of its original family of dividend-weighted stock ETFs, the first of which launched in 2006. Currently, Professor Siegel and WisdomTree collaborate on a suite of Model Portfolios that incorporate Professor Siegel’s outlook for stock and bond returns and the latest research from the sixth edition of Stocks for the Long Run.
Jeremy Schwartz has served as our Global Chief Investment Officer since November 2021 and leads WisdomTree’s investment strategy team in the construction of WisdomTree’s equity Indexes, quantitative active strategies and multi-asset Model Portfolios. Jeremy joined WisdomTree in May 2005 as a Senior Analyst, adding Deputy Director of Research to his responsibilities in February 2007. He served as Director of Research from October 2008 to October 2018 and as Global Head of Research from November 2018 to November 2021. Before joining WisdomTree, he was a head research assistant for Professor Jeremy Siegel and, in 2022, became his co-author on the sixth edition of the book Stocks for the Long Run. Jeremy is also co-author of the Financial Analysts Journal paper “What Happened to the Original Stocks in the S&P 500?” He received his B.S. in economics from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and hosts the Wharton Business Radio program Behind the Markets on SiriusXM 132. Jeremy is a member of the CFA Society of Philadelphia.
