During the macroeconomic segment of its 2024 edition, participants in DoubleLine Round Table Prime among other issues debate the seeming failure of the most telegraphed recession in history to materialize in 2023, the intersection of Federal Reserve policy with a presidential election year and deep changes in the economy post-2020. Coming together for Round Table Prime are DoubleLine CEO Jeffrey Gundlach and moderator DoubleLine Deputy Chief Investment Officer Jeffrey Sherman with their guests James Bianco, President and Macro Strategist at Bianco Research; Danielle DiMartino Booth, CEO of Quill Intelligence; Charles Payne, author and Fox Business Anchor; and David Rosenberg, President of economic consulting firm Rosenberg Research & Associates. Round Table Prime was held Jan. 11, 2024.
Topics include:
(1:08) How the U.S. avoided recession despite numerous recessionary indicators and evidence the U.S. economy is far more downbeat than some widely followed economic statistics would indicate.
(10:57) The condition of consumer and household financial conditions and the rapid rise of consumer borrowing delinquencies.
(15:50) Possible factors behind the protracted length of the current cycle, including money supply as measured by M2, and as Charles Payne points out (27:58), the velocity of money.
(30:45) Post-2020 transformations of the economy, the biggest, Jim Bianco notes, being remote work and acceleration of deglobalization, with important implications for inflation.
(35:52) Federal Reserve monetary policy, including Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell’s dovish pivot Dec. 13, which Danielle DiMartino Booth thinks was timed “to get in front of the Iowa caucuses.”
(45:50) The probability of recession in 2024.
(50:11) Jeffrey Gundlach’s warning about the combination of the federal government running large deficits (even amid low unemployment), funded by debt, amid rising interest rates, and his outlook on the inevitability of a restructuring of the federal debt and the unfunded liabilities of American entitlement programs.
Mr. Gundlach is CEO of DoubleLine. In 2011, he appeared on the cover of Barron's as "The New Bond King." In 2013, Institutional Investor named him "Money Manager of the Year." In 2012, 2015 and 2016, he was named one of "The Fifty Most Influential" in Bloomberg Markets. In 2017, he was inducted into the FIASI Fixed Income Hall of Fame. Mr. Gundlach is a summa cum laude graduate of Dartmouth College, with degrees in Mathematics and Philosophy.
As DoubleLine’s Deputy Chief Investment Officer, Jeffrey Sherman oversees and administers DoubleLine’s Investment Management sub-committee coordinating and implementing policies and processes across the investment teams. He also serves as lead portfolio manager for multi-sector and derivative-based strategies. Mr. Sherman is a member of DoubleLine’s Executive Management and Fixed Income Asset Allocation Committees. He can be heard regularly on his podcast “The Sherman Show” (Twitter @ShermanShowPod, ShermanShow@Doubleline.com) where he interviews distinguished guests, giving listeners insight into DoubleLine’s current views. In 2018, Money Management Executive named Jeffrey Sherman as one of “10 Fund Managers to Watch” in its yearly special report. Prior to joining DoubleLine in 2009, Mr. Sherman was a Senior Vice President at TCW where he worked as a portfolio manager and quantitative analyst focused on fixed income and real-asset portfolios. He was a statistics and mathematics instructor at both the University of the Pacific and Florida State University. Mr. Sherman taught Quantitative Methods for Level I candidates in the CFA LA/USC Review Program for many years. He holds a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from the University of the Pacific and an M.S. in Financial Engineering from the Claremont Graduate University. Mr. Sherman is a CFA® charterholder.
