I agree, which still begs the questions, what the hell were they expecting to happen?
Your quest doesn't seem to be to understand the true position, it's to justify your crash bias and mock central bankers. To me, this means you should be open to the same introspection in 3-5 years. Look back at 2009-2011 and see how many arrogant traders put up terrible forecasts and openly mocked anyone such as myself that forecast a sustained bull market. For example, the concept of the SPX getting to 15xx was considered a joke on here. If we were to believe the financial media or some fairly illustrious posters on here, the US would be in a deep Depression right now. And the supposedly silly central bankers who helped create today's situation ( far, far better then a Depression ) are still being criticized despite being successful on most of their goals.
So in all seriousness, reiterating the same old doomsday bs isn't getting any smarter now that the US is in a far more stable position then it was in 2008. The subprime crisis was a very REAL event that had real consequences on the world. The US had the additional aspects of funding absurdly expensive military projects and runaway executive pay perks. Central bankers have recovered nicely from the brink.
To answer your question, I think that moderate inflation ( check ), a more stable US economy ( check ), ending or reducing "QE" ( check ), recovering US housing market ( check ) were all in play. Sure, government debt is much higher ( concerning ), but look up Debt to GDP figures and you'll see it's not unprecedented levels and certainly not the albatross that many on here think it is. More important really is employment levels. If people have jobs, it will all work out as it did in the 1970s and 1980s. And if people have jobs, the Fed tool kit will include higher personal taxes to pay off debt. This is coming, Americans paid far too little income tax in the past in relationship to government expenditures. This is the legacy of core baby boomers, who had it fairly easy their whole careers.
This whole post is of course opinion, as are all the other posts. We can revisit this in the future, just like I love going back to 2009 and 2010 on here and seeing where people's heads were at. If I'm wrong, I still think Canada is a pretty safe bet to soldier on in today's world. Americans could possibly encounter some new hardships they aren't used to, sure.
