Economics Asked on May 14, 2021
I am often skeptical of emphasis placed on this "alphabet soup" that has surrounded the shape of the economic recovery. Given the uncertainties at play with this type of forecasting, it may be realistic to just accept that the exact shape cannot be resolved empirically any time soon. Nonetheless, one particular letter has prompted me to delve further: K.
A K-shaped recovery occurs when, following a recession, different
parts of the economy recover at different rates, times, or magnitudes.
This is in contrast to an even, uniform recovery across sectors,
industries, or groups of people. A K-shaped recovery leads to changes
in the structure of the economy or the broader society as economic
outcomes and relations are fundamentally changed before and after the
recession. This type of recovery is called K-shaped because the path
of different parts of the economy when charted together may diverge,
resembling the two arms of the Roman letter "K."
Perhaps the K-shaped dynamics in US equities needs little introduction, given the coverage of NASDAQ and S&P500 milestones this year despite deteriorating macro conditions. But going further, we see similar financial speculation in the fixed income space. Bond transactions motivated less by "safe haven" philosophy and more as motivated by speculative buying/holding and selling after sufficient capital gains (suggestive of bond traders simply trading momentum, not fundamentals).
In one of BofA’s recent reports, we see the proportion of financial assets to GDP has been high for several decades, but has become even more pronounced in recent years.
Taken together, it would seem the decoupling of the real economy from the financial economy is becoming more obvious. Though the financial services sector is likely a winner under the K-shaped recovery scenario, I’m not sure that comes at the expense of everyone else — perhaps its not necessarily a "bad" thing for the economy as a whole. For example:
But there are sinister implications as well: credit, asset bubbles.
What is the consensus view, and is there a benign explanation for how/why the financial/real economy’s K-shaped recovery?
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