We've had fairly slow growth in this expansion which hasn't given us any huge accesses, though the economy is pretty much at full employment. There is no question that if consumers continue to have their spending growth grow at moderate levels. There is no reason that this can't continue for some time. Inflation, disruption that took until the 1980's to unwind. But you know it's the kind of euphoria that we're seeing among economists, that's interesting.
Economists are probably a bit more conservative than stock market seers.
But when everyone is convinced that the good times are going to last forever and by the way, before the early 60's you probably had got to go back to the late 20's, the Roaring 20's, to find a similar sense of euphoria. Usually when everyone gets to that stage, trouble isn't too far down the road and I am not being a Cassandra on this, I'm just saying that, making a simple point that when people are so convinced that things are going to be good indefinitely, they have thrown caution to the wind, they've taken actions that don't really prepare them for anything on the down side. So consequently anything that does happen, this adversity becomes very, very difficult because people are so ill-prepared. Economist Gary Shilling speaking from New Jersey. The crusading head of the Food and Drug Administration is stepping down.