18th Annual Financial Forum-sponsored by PP&Co and Legacy Capital

Petrinovich Pugh and Co (“PP&Co) held The 18th Annual Financial Forum with Christopher Thornberg, PhD of Beacon Economics. The webinar (recording above) addressed questions from the state of the US economy, recovery, housing, jobs, and so much more.

The Big Picture

• Data suggests that those who desire to work from home typically have families; whereas those who desire to go to the office are single and prefer an office vs social isolation.

• The Covid pandemic has been a tragic natural disaster. Yet history shows that natural disasters have little long-run economic impact. A quicker-than-normal recovery was certain.

• Regardless, fiscal and monetary policy reactions to the crisis have been excessive. This will overheat the economy in the short term, but also introduce of dangerous instabilities into the next expansion, particularly inflation.

• The recovery is not even—in terms of the structure of output as well as the availability of inputs. The resultant supply chain issues are the major issue holding the economy back.

• Many of the day-to-day crises we hear about in the news are simply not real. National and local need to turn their attention to managing this next expansion

• There are no economic “new-normals” from the pandemic, but it has accelerated underlying trends that were already in place, particularly labor shortages, de-retailing and WFH

• Real estate investment trends are sustainable for now, but most capacity industries will run the risk of over-investment in response to the temporary surge in economic activity