The writer is president of Queens’ College, Cambridge university, and adviser to Allianz and Gramercy
What, if anything, will happen to the great disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street? This is a key question for investors positioning their portfolios for 2021. It is also an important question for the global economy and policymakers.
Throughout this pandemic year, we have experienced a further sharp widening of an already remarkable gap between financial markets and the economy. A rapid recovery in asset prices from the March 23 lows took major US indices to record levels, even before the recent good news on Covid-19 vaccines. Combined with even more accommodative central bank policies, this enabled record debt issuance at historically low levels of compensation for creditors.