David Osman of the IRF Podcast is joined once again by David Ranson, President of HCWE & Co. HCWE has a clientele of institutional investors, hedge funds and family offices throughout North America and Europe.

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With the uneven roll-out of Covid19 vaccines around the world this year, there is a wider than usual range of forecasts for economic growth and inflation both in 2021 and in 2022.  From an investment standpoint a lot depends on the outlook for the US economy. David Ranson explains the difference in the work of HCWE and his evidence for doubting the effectiveness of monetary and fiscal policies conducted during 2020. He doubts whether stimulus programmes stimulate output. He explains that productivity cannot be used to forecast the economy – you need to look at leading indicators that work during a crisis e.g. VIX index. He states that the economy has shown a great amount of resilience, both in the US and throughout the developed world. ‘Everyone was talking about a recession, but it was nothing like a normal recession. There was an enormous drop in output but it bounced back very quickly, which is quite unlike a recession. What we had was a Great Interruption.’

Please note that slides are available alongside this podcast upon request from the Independent Research Forum ([email protected]).