Shervin Pishevar has not gained much popularity for his doom-filled opinions on the state of the equity markets and his harsh critiques of the Fed’s reckless monetary policies. But truth isn’t decided by committee. And it turns out that most of Shervin Pishevar’s insights and predictions have been well worth paying attention to.
A bubble blown from hot air
Shervin Pishevar has easily been the most vocal critic of the Federal Reserve’s policies and their justifications for those policies of anyone throughout Silicon Valley. Shervin Pishevar has repeatedly characterized the Fed’s open-market interventions as incredibly risky and their reasoning for those policies as specious. Now, he says that the current stock market woes are the direct result of the Fed’s tinkering in the free markets over the last decade.
Pishevar says that the historically low interest rates, in some cases leading to the ridiculous situation of real negative interest, has incentivized corporations to begin massive amounts of corporate buybacks using those cheap funds as financing. This surge in corporate buybacks, as well as private investors using virtually free money to speculate in equities, has led to one of the most clear-cut asset bubbles in the history of the U.S. stock market.
Shervin Pishevar says that many of the largest companies are now trading at Schiller P/E ratios in the 30s, far higher than historic norms. He says that such heightened valuations make it highly unlikely that future returns will be anywhere near historic norms, with all of the implications that such a scenario has for institutional investors.
Pishevar has also stated that the incredibly low interest rate environment of the last decade has inflated other bubbles, including in the realm of real estate. There, he says, the unaffordability of housing is contributing to a homelessness crisis at the same time that it makes it impossible for young families to form and begin accumulating wealth. Ultimately, says Pishevar, all of these bubbles are slated to be deflated, leaving trillions of dollars in wealth destroyed and possibly sending the economy into a depression.