Top Economist Ed Hyman Has Favorable 2020 Outlook For The U.S.

WealthTrack's Consuelo Mack is in the midst of conducting her annual year end interview with Ed Hyman, Vice Chairman of Evercore and this year, Matthew McLennan of First Eagle Investment Management. Part I of the interview below focuses on the U.S. with a later Part 2 interview focusing on the international outlook. As noted by WealthTrack, "Ed Hyman is the Founder and Chairman of its Evercore ISI division and leads its economic research team. He has been voted Wall Street’s Number One Economist for an unprecedented 39 years in Institutional Investor’s annual survey."

In last year's forecast with Consuelo, Ed Hyman correctly was bullish on the U.S. outlook and believed a recession was several years away. Much has changed this year with the Fed now having eased in 2019 and a far cry from the tightening position in 2018. Hyman believes the U.S. has experienced three mini recessions during this expansion, 2012, precipitated by issues in Europe and Greece, 2016, issues in China and a collapse in oil prices and 2018, with a Fed in a tightening mode along with the initiation of the trade/tariff dispute. As Ed states in the interview, the expansion is chronologically long, but he believes the business cycle is not old.

Not that Matt McLennan is bearish, but he does provide some insights that could be headwinds for the market and economy. These headwinds may not materialize until a few years into the future though. One concern with McLennan is the Fed's recent position that they will evaluate inflation from an averaging perspective versus a specific target. Might stagflation be a result then.

The below interview is a worthwhile viewing.