Thanks for posting this, I think this is the most important point, and I also think it's a great thing. The downside of the business cycle is no fun, but it should be expected nearly as much as the sun rises and sets. What I believe is truly different, though, is that a generation of people have never known "reasonable" interest rates. People are acting like we're near end times when the effective fed funds rate was still only 3.08% in October [1]. Yet for decades before the start of ultra-low rates with the Greenspan years, rates were much, much higher. And there are fundamental structural changes that mean that ultra low rates will be dead probably for the rest of my lifetime:
1. The end of the Cold War brought a "peace dividend" and wildly increasing globalization. That trend has abruptly reversed. It will be a long, long time before countries outsource so much without considering the geopolitical consequences.
2. The ongoing retirement of the boomers, and a re-evaluation of many women in the workforce who have found that it doesn't make sense to make a relatively low wage just to spend it all on childcare, means that labor will be much tighter than in the past couple decades. Also, my hypothesis is that vastly increasing wealth inequality means that a lot of folks who would have previously focused on their careers now no longer see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires", as we've seen a resurgence in interest in unions.
The good thing about a renormalization of rates is that companies will actually need to make money again to stay alive.
yep. And VCs will need to deliver even higher returns to stay alive.
In fact, the recent exuberance allowed VCs to get rid of the 'hurdle rate' = min return to deliver to LPs before making any carried. This will probably be corrected back, as it should be. If interest rates stay high, then hurdle rates will be very challenging for VCs.
1. The end of the Cold War brought a "peace dividend" and wildly increasing globalization. That trend has abruptly reversed. It will be a long, long time before countries outsource so much without considering the geopolitical consequences.
2. The ongoing retirement of the boomers, and a re-evaluation of many women in the workforce who have found that it doesn't make sense to make a relatively low wage just to spend it all on childcare, means that labor will be much tighter than in the past couple decades. Also, my hypothesis is that vastly increasing wealth inequality means that a lot of folks who would have previously focused on their careers now no longer see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires", as we've seen a resurgence in interest in unions.
The good thing about a renormalization of rates is that companies will actually need to make money again to stay alive.
1. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS