In the Financial Times, Larry Summers asks the question on everyone’s mind: “How much should forecasters and policymakers look to speculative markets as indicators of future prospects? And how alarmed should they be about the prospect of a global slowdown?” While the stock market isn’t the economy, the current volatility has plenty of people seeing signs of 2008. This as investors hope the U.S. stock market can stabilize after a turbulent start to 2016, when the Dow tumbled 6.2 percent over the course of last week. Despite a strong jobs report, U.S. equities markets, as measured by the Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index, suffered a paper loss of $1.5 trillion. Could this all be signaling a recession? Two separate articles ask that question, pointing to the long U.S. recovery growing old in the tooth, the flagging Chinese economy, and high debt levels in emerging markets as proof.
