In the first part of the show, Jason Hartman talks to his mom about being a do-it-yourselfer and inflation-induced debt destruction. Later on, he interviews the Chief Economist at John Hancock/Manulife Asset Management, Megan Greene. They talk about the results of the investor sentiment survey, regulatory environment, and high-frequency trading. She also gives her thoughts on the stock market and whether the Feds will raise the interest rate.
Announcer 0:00
This show is produced by the Hartman media company. For more information and links to all our great podcasts, visit Hartman media.com.
Announcer 0:13
Welcome to the creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You’re about to learn a new slant on investing some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world’s most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine self made multi millionaire who’s actually been there and done it. He’s a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who’s owned properties in 11 states had hundreds of tenants and been involved in 1000s of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason’s footsteps on the road to your financial independence day. You really can do it on Now, here’s your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.
Jason Hartman 1:03
Welcome to the creating wealth show. This is episode number 586 586. This is Jason Hartman, your host, thank you so much for joining me today. And I am coming to you live from a rental property for the intro of this section. Our guest today will be Megan green, the chief economist with john Hancock asset management, and she’s got some interesting things to say on the economy. But I I’ve been in a big seminar all weekend, one of our venture Lyons, mastermind members, Elizabeth was there and I got to hang out with her and saw some of you other clients and listeners there as well. So it was nice to see you. And you might have heard of this speaker. His name is Gosh, what’s his name? Oh, Tony, Tony, Tony. Tony Robbins. Yeah, that’s probably heard of them. And I came out here that was in Los Angeles at the convention center. And then I came out to see my mom who happens to be in Southern California, because she, as you know, is an extreme do it yourselfer, and extreme do it yourselfer? Yes, you’ve heard of extreme sports. But my mother is an extreme do it yourselfer. So she is here renting one of her properties in Moreno Valley that she bought many years ago. So Mom, how you doing?
Jason’s mom 2:16
Hi, Jason. I’m doing well.
Jason Hartman 2:19
You might hear some noise in the background, because I’m guys talking over here. What year did you buy this house?
Jason’s mom 2:25
I think I bought it in 1989.
Jason Hartman 2:28
1989. So that is a long time ago. And do you remember what you paid for?
Jason’s mom 2:34
I think it was about $82,000, maybe. Somewhere in the 80s I think. Maybe it was 78,000.
Jason Hartman 2:43
Okay, and now it’s worth about $280,000 and it’s vacant. And we just went to lunch and as we were driving to lunch and coming back. tell the audience mom what you were so proud of and it’s not your son because you kept pointing them out to me on the way to and from lunch.
Jason’s mom 3:06
Oh, well, you know, since I’m such an extreme do it yourselfer. I was just pointing out to Jason, all of the signs that I had put up my little 18 by 24 signs that is quicker than anything else to get customers. I put them up. Let’s see today is Sunday. I put them up Friday night you know when it was getting dark. And honestly before I had 10 of them up the phone calls started coming in. And yesterday I must have had at one point in time 20, 25 people in the house you know looking at it and all day long. I was so exhausted when I got home last night because you know they just kept coming you know
Jason Hartman 3:44
The people kept coming. And and you’ve got a total of. Now folks, by the way, if you’re a new listener This is not the way we do real estate here.
Jason’s mom 3:53
Yes, sorry about that, Jason.
Jason Hartman 3:55
I’m totally blowing it for you here because I am with the extreme do it yourselfer. We believe in armchair investing and remote control investing where you have people doing all this for you and of course my company offers a done with you process not not to do it yourself and not an extreme Do It Yourself certainly like mom and not a done for you but a done with you process. That’s what we we really help listeners do. And clients. So mom put up 43 signs you counted them. Right?
Jason’s mom 4:26
Right. Right.
Jason Hartman 4:27
And you’ve almost got this house rented. How much you asking for it. Tell us about that.
Jason’s mom 4:31
Just 1500.
Jason Hartman 4:32
$1500. And what is it, a four bedroom?
Jason’s mom 4:35
Four bedroom. Two bath. 1178 square feet.
Jason Hartman 4:38
Okay, and it looks like it’s worth about 280,000 now?
Jason’s mom 4:42
Well, I would say so at least because the lady up the street whose house has been redone. I think they’re asking about 380,000, I can’t remember exactly. I went to look at the sign but it was about that price.
Jason Hartman 4:53
So Mom, you you know what I’m going to give you a hard time about here on the show again, right?
Jason’s mom 4:58
Oh yeah.
Jason’s Hartman 4:58
What is it?
Jason’s mom 4:59
Rent to value.
Jason Hartman 5:00
Yeah. Tell the listeners what you mean. Explain that a little bit?
Jason’s mom5:04
Well, the biggest thing we have is this house I have in Los Angeles that’s worth I guess now about a million dollars.
Jason Hartman 5:10
A little over a million.
Jason’s mom 5:12
And I rent it for 400,000 or 4000. Yeah. However, I just chatted with a real estate agent there. And she says, well, depending on, you know, the scarcity and what have you, she says you could get up to 6000 on it. And I think that’s pretty good for a 1350 square foot house.
Jason Hartman 5:29
Well, tell them what your son thinks.
Jason’s mom 5:31
And my son thinks it’s terrible, because I could probably be doubling that income if I would just sell it and get, you know,
Jason Hartman 5:38
And buy 10 $100,000 houses, you get 10,000 a month in income, right? 1% RV.
Jason’s mom 5:42
Yeah. Except that’s 10 people to deal with.
Jason Hartman 5:45
Yeah, well, you could buy a couple for, you know,
Jason’s mom 5:50
Were you interested in seeing the house?
Jason Hartman 5:53
See, folks
Jason’s mom 5:54
Come right in
Jason Hartman 5:54
This is live. On the scene here. So yeah, so I always bugged you about that. But you know, in the past several years, to be fair to you, you did you did, you know, follow my lead. It’s just that you, you’re you just unwilling to part with these old houses. You just, I don’t know why, you know, you just like them.
Jason’s mom 6:12
Well, I’m just like Warren Buffett, keep everything forever, right?
Jason Hartman 6:17
Yeah, value investing philosophy. Did you hear the episode we just had with Tren Griffin, who wrote the book, Charlie Munger, the complete investor? And he talks a lot about Buffett and Munger
Jason’s mom 6:26
Oh, no, no, I saw the title. But I didn’t
Jason Hartman 6:28
You didn’t hear that yet? Yeah. Anyway, that’s the scoop on the houses here. And good luck renting. I bet you’re going to have this rented by the end of the day. It’s Sunday afternoon now.
Jason’s mom 6:37
Well, well, if, you know, we’d been able to run the credit reports yesterday, I would have had it rented yesterday, because I have six apps, you know,
Jason Hartman 6:44
And by the way on the applications as an extreme do it yourselfer, you charge $25 per application. And if it’s a husband and a wife, it’s 25 each, right?
Jason’s mom 6:52
Yes, yeah.
Jason Hartman 6:53
So I’ll let you get to your prospective tenants here, mom. But thank you for joining us on the show. Any words of wisdom you want to share for real estate investors before you
Jason’s mom 7:03
Well, I just think signs are the fastest.
Jason Hartman 7:08
And mom is an extreme do it yourselfer? Okay, I’ll let you talk to these people. Mom is an extreme do it yourselfer. So that’s not what we do here. We help people make it a lot easier than my mom’s approach. But the funny thing is about mom, is that she, she says, Well, you know, what else am I gonna do with my time? You know, she retired years ago, and she retired on 13 rental properties. And those rental properties. You’ve heard the story before on prior shows, I’m sure but those rental properties at the time of her retirement produced about $220,000 per year in income. And, and that was actual net income, because she had most of them paid off, you know, doing it the old school way, buying them, paying them off having the tenant pay down your mortgage, pay off your mortgage for you. Of course, the modern way that we talk about on the show is inflation-induced debt destruction. And so I have convinced my mother to go into a little bit of debt. I know those of you new listeners, you’re gonna think, well, this guy is crazy. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Yeah, I really do know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the hidden wealth creator with with real estate investments, inflation induced debt destruction. Don’t try and say that 10 times fast. But do follow that plan and follow the refi till you die plan. That is the most tax and wealth creation efficient way to extract the wealth from your real estate portfolio. So many past episodes on those topics, just go to Jason hartman.com. And search those terms on the search bar at the Jason hartman.com website.
And in addition to that, before we get to our guest today, who you’re really going to enjoy making green, she’s awesome. had some really good things to say. And before we get to that, I want to remind you of a couple of things we have coming up. We’ve got the Orlando property tour, and that is coming up in just a couple of weeks. Orlando, Florida, that’s going to be a phenomenal property tour. We’ve got a lot of people coming to that by the way, it’s going to be a decent sized tour. We’ve got a little room left, we’ve got a group rate at the hotel, it’s at a at a nice hotel. So I think you’ll enjoy that too. And just go to Jason hartman.com click on events to register for that. And our meet the Masters event. We’ve got rich dad, attorney and multiple book author best selling author, Garrett Sutton, speaking on Saturday at meet the masters and he is a real expert at asset protection and estate planning and a lot of the legal loopholes that relate to real estate investors. So I think you’ll really enjoy that. And that’s our meet the Masters event. It’s only once a year and that’s rich dad, attorney and Rich Dad adviser, Garrett Sutton Of course, working with Robert Kiyosaki and, and that whole Rich Dad team. So I think you’ll like that.
And we’ve got a bunch of other great speakers flying in from all over the country for meet the masters. And that is in early January, also register at Jason hartman.com. In the event section. One last thing before we get to our guests, the venture Alliance mastermind, we are going to Dubai, Dubai. Yes, in February, we are planning a trip to Dubai for the venture Alliance. And we are also looking at some exciting deals. So if you want to really take things to the next level, and really move your real estate investing career ahead and explore investing in notes and land contracts and paper assets as well as real estate, check out the venture Alliance at venture Alliance mastermind.com. I’m going to be back on probably Wednesday’s episode, I’m going to talk to you a lot more about it a little debrief. And some of the stuff I learned from Tony Robbins this weekend. But one great quote that stood out to me is this one, and it meant a lot to me, I think it will mean a lot to you, too, from Tony. And that is we all have these certain stories we tell ourselves, right? These stories that we live by, you know, I can or I can’t do this, because these are my circumstances or this is where I came from or whatever. And Tony did some great exercises on that over the weekend. So here’s the quote. Now this is this is worthy of writing it down. Okay. If not, bookmark this section of the tape. Not a tape, I understand that. But you know, figure speech, bookmark this little section or Remember, you’re, you know, about 12 minutes in or somewhere around there right now.
Okay. Here’s the quote, divorce the story, marry the truth. Divorce the story, marry the truth. And the truth is, many people have become very successful real estate investors with much bigger odds and more oppressive circumstances, then you certainly I’m one of them. Okay, I bought my first income property when I was 20 years old. I had no money. I didn’t have a college degree. I grew up kind of poor. Okay. You know, I didn’t, I didn’t have a lot of these advantages that you definitely have. And certainly, there have been people that have done much more incredible things in real estate than I have. So divorce the story, marry the truth. Anyway, let’s jump to our guest Megan green, and get some perspective on the economy. And it looks like my mom is going to have her house rented here pretty quick. She’s got loads of people over here. Here’s Megan Greene.
It’s my pleasure to welcome Megan Greene to the show. She is Chief economist of Manulife in john Hancock asset management. And she’s coming to us today from Boston. Megan, welcome. How are you?
Megan Greene 13:00
Good. Thanks. Thanks for having me.
Jason Hartman 13:02
It’s good to have you on. So the markets are volatile. Everybody’s wondering if there is another shoe that is going to drop? What is your take on the crazy times in which we live?
Megan Greene 13:13
Well, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. And markets really are volatile. And that’s not going to change anytime soon. It’s probably because some of these factors that have caused market volatility, like the collapse in Chinese equities, or the devaluation of the renminbi, or the eurozone crisis, and none of them has been fundamentally addressed. So they’ll be back. But it’s also largely because of regulatory reform in response to the global financial crisis. So we just have much less market liquidity now. And as a result, any corrections in the market are going to be big and swift. And so that causes a lot of volatility, which is a worrisome environment in which to be investing. But it’s one that also provides a lot of opportunity.
Jason Hartman 13:53
Okay, so that was a really interesting statement you just made Megan, about the regulatory environment since the Great Recession. You know, before that, there was a lot of talk about Sarbanes Oxley and corporate governance. And now, the regulations have, you know, everyone always shouts for more regulation whenever there’s a crisis. But a lot of times the regulation is caused the crisis. And very few people really get at the heart of the matter, it seems sometimes tell us more about that, if you would dive more deeply into that.
Megan Greene 14:22
Sure. So it’s probably because of Basel three reforms, which means they have to hold more capital relative to their assets. So that means that there’s less liquidity, it also means that banks can be market makers in the same way that they were before. And so in the absence of banks playing that role, we’ve got new players and one of the new players is a high frequency traders. And you know, we find that a lot of the actual trading going on is happening within one hour of every day. And so for the rest of the day, there’s actually very little liquidity in the market because there’s not much activity going on. There are a lot of bets being put on and taken off, but In terms of actual trades, it all happens in a concentrated period. So that’s changed the general amount of liquidity that we’ve gotten in the markets as well. And if there’s little liquidity in the markets, then anytime investors decide something’s not a good investment, they all run for the door at the same time. And so that means the market corrections end up being much bigger and faster than what we’re used to.
Jason Hartman 15:20
So which hour of the day do the high frequency traders really get busy?
Megan Greene 15:24
So you know, it’s not a specific mandated hour of the day, it’s just it all happens in a concentrated period of time, based on kind of them placing bets and taking them off. So all the actual trades happen all together?
Jason Hartman 15:38
You know, with a high frequency trading issue, it just seems like that that makes it virtually impossible for the small investor to play in the game. I mean, how does the stock market just become an institutional game now? Where it’s it’s no longer for the person in the general public?
Megan Greene 15:54
No, it hasn’t. In fact, you know, according to our investors that we evolved in the survey that we’ve recently done, stocks are continue to be a good investment or considered a good investment. What happens I think, is often when you have institutional investors trying to put trades through, they’re so big that they have to be broken up anyhow. So there is a place for smaller investors to be investing.
Jason Hartman 16:17
What do you think about high-frequency trading? You know, it just reminds me of Mike, the Michael Lewis interview on 60 minutes, a while back and how he said the stock market is basically just rigged. Thoughts on that?
Megan Greene 16:29
Yeah, I mean, for anyone who’s read Michael lewis’s book, it is partly rigged, you know, a lot of trading is happening in dark pools, that’s happening less now than it was kind of at the height of the crisis. So that’s good. I mean, in my view, high-frequency traders are meant to be producing more liquidity in the markets. And that’s the case when times are really good. But you know, every other time they’re actually pulling liquidity out of the markets. And so I think that’s, that’s the piece that’s worth focusing on. For anyone who’s trying to invest today.
Jason Hartman 17:00
Can you drill down on that liquidity issue for a moment? So it sounds like your thesis is that the high-frequency traders actually make the market more liquid? Because they’re moving stocks around? Because they’re trading things? Is that correct?
Megan Greene 17:14
So in good times, they are. In bad times, they’re just placing bets and taking them off and distorting the markets without producing or providing any liquidity. And since banks can’t step in to be the market makers, then you’re stuck with illiquid markets. And it’s in great contrast to what the macroeconomic environment is like, because we’ve had most major central banks pumping liquidity into the system by buying a private and in some cases, public assets. So there’s tons of liquidity in the macro system, it’s just in the market, that we don’t have much liquidity.
Jason Hartman 17:45
Okay, so let’s talk about the macro system, then you’re talking about just the global economy in general, or what do you mean by that?
Megan Greene 17:51
That’s right, the global economy in general, and the money supply in the global economy.
Jason Hartman 17:56
Right? Well, certainly the money supply has expanded. Won’t argue with that. To heights that are unimaginable. You know, maybe not the credit supply, though, the credit supply is in a different part of the money supply. So you know, when you break it down in terms of the components there. But you know, what do you think about what’s going on with the macro global economy? And you know, what, what’s the next move for the Fed? Everybody seems to be of concern about that.
Megan Greene 18:21
Yeah. Well, I think we live in this age of oversupply of everything. So we have a massive debt overhang in most countries, we’ve got an oversupply of commodities. There’s an oversupply of liquidity I think in the macro system. There’s an oversupply of labor, really cheap labor. And there’s an oversupply of regulation, you could argue and so all of this means that actually, we live in a really low growth, low inflation, low rate environment, and it’s one in which central bankers are really the pinch hitters. They’re the only ones who have the ability and the power and the finances to step in to try to support economies and financial systems. And so, you know, that’s partly why they keep flooding the system. Now, you’ve asked me about the Fed in particular. And I think, you know, the Fed is the only major central bank that’s actually talking realistically about hiking rates. They decided not to hike, hike rates in September, which in my view is a great idea. I’ve always thought that the Fed might hike in December at the earliest. But I absolutely think they should wait to hike later. And that’s largely because of my views of inflation. So we don’t have any upward pressure really on wages in the US. And as long as we don’t have upward pressure on wages, we won’t have much upward pressure on inflation. And so inflation keeps coming in well below the feds target of 2%. And as long as that’s the case, I think that the Fed should wait to start tightening monetary policy.
Jason Hartman 19:41
Interesting point, you know, Americans haven’t had a raise in real dollar terms. And, I don’t know a couple of decades. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s mind boggling, really. And it’s hard to figure out if the standard of living is increasing or if it’s declining. I mean, you can argue that so many ways when you look at technology and all of the amazing things that are going on out there, you know, it would be easy to argue that things just keep getting better in spite of, you know, silly government policies and bad decisions and so forth. I don’t know, you know, people, people don’t live in houses that are on as much land as they used to be. Everything is more dense now. So, you know, I’ve seen those studies about the the square footage of the average American Home, and I think that’s misleading because it doesn’t take into account land. You know, they just say, Well, you know, we’re after World War Two, you know, the typical American lived in a two-bedroom, one bath, 900 square foot house, there are many suburban areas, Lakewood, California comes to mind as, as one, you know, Levittown maybe. But now everybody’s stacked up, you know, maybe they have a little more square footage, but they’re a lot more dense. So what are your thoughts on that?
Megan Greene 20:54
Well, you know, I think so according to this investor sentiment survey that we’ve just put out, actually, those who participated in this survey feel like they are better off now than they were two years ago. And what’s more, they think they’ll be even more better off in two years from now. So. So I think that generally, the perception is that, you know, standards of living are increasing. In terms of kind of square footage, I guess, then you need to look at sort of population statistics and demographics and, and immigration statistics and things like that. But you know, it’s not something that ever comes across nicely as being an issue.
Jason Hartman 21:31
So the Fed shouldn’t raise the rates. That’s your opinion. And do you, do you do predict that they will do that in December? Or what do you think? Yeah, I mean, I know you said this, the earliest
Megan Greene 21:42
Yeah. So I actually do think that the Fed will end up hiking in December. Yeah, there’s a risk that the weights but I think when I speak to people from the Fed, or other central bankers, in fact, overwhelmingly, most central bankers are desperate to normalize monetary policy. And that’s largely because if you’ve got such extraordinary monetary policy going on, central bankers are in the spotlight all the time. And so consequently, they’re coming under political pressure, all the time. And they’re really keen to avoid that to go back, going back to being fully independent, not having to worry about that, not having to worry about stoking inequality, controversial issues like that. And so I do think that largely for political reasons, they’ll end up liking in December, but like I said, I think they should wait based on the data.
Jason Hartman 22:30
Okay. And so which data do you think is the is the key driver of that? I mean, that the economy is still somewhat anemic? Or do you like, do you buy into Megan, that it’s that things have really been improving a lot. All this stuff is so stratisfied, you know, we see stories about middle-class people becoming homeless, and, you know, these tent cities, but I don’t know, for some, they’re making more money than ever, I can tell you, my business is very good. You know, what do you thought?
Megan Greene 22:59
So there’s no question that monetary easing on the levels that we’ve seen, or the scale that we’ve seen in the US and globally Stokes inequality, you know, it’s those people who have assets that benefit the most, because the whole point of quantitative easing is to push investors into riskier assets, and you know, reflate entire asset classes. So it is stoking inequality, for sure. But I think in terms of figuring out what the Fed should do, the thing that I look at really is wage growth. So when the non farm payrolls data comes out every month and tells us how many jobs we’ve been adding every month, I look straight at the headline figure. Because while we’re adding a lot of jobs every month, we’re adding them in all the wrong sectors. So we’re adding them primarily in low-wage sectors. And as long as we’re adding jobs, sort of at or slightly above minimum wage, there isn’t a whole lot of upward pressure on wages, and that there is an upward pressure on wages, there won’t be upward pressure on inflation. And what’s more, the US is talking about tightening monetary policy, but every other major central bank is talking about easing further, or considering easing further. And so that monetary policy divergence means that actually the US is biggest import will be deflationary pressures. So that will also prevent inflation from coming into the US economy. And that is one of the feds two mandates is inflation of 2%.
Jason Hartman 24:21
Right. Right. Yeah. That’s very interesting. I like Megan, how you pointed out that the current monetary policy creates more inequality, because of course it has that, you know, it has the effect of inflating some asset classes and, you know, tampering with the worth of wages and so forth. Can you dive into that a little bit more, I really found that to be a very interesting comment of yours.
Megan Greene 24:43
Sure. So you know, the point of quantitative easing is to push investors into riskier investments, because they know that the central bank will be there to buy it off them if they’re desperate. So they know they’ll have a buyer of last resort and so that that’s why equity markets are so buoyant. When Central Banks start buying up private and public assets and quantitative easing. And so what it ends up doing is pushing up prices for these assets. And so if you are actually someone who is sitting on it, who owns an asset, then you benefit when you eventually sell it. But if you’re poor and haven’t invested in the stock market, for example, which the lower stratosphere of our society probably hasn’t been, you don’t benefit at all from this, the idea is that maybe when the wealthier people in society has either investments become more valuable than they’ll spend more, and there will be some kind of trickle down effect to the lower classes. And we haven’t really seen that play out in reality. And so unfortunately, inequality is just getting worse. And there’s a really quick, easy, logical fix for this kind of inequality. And for the lack of demand we have globally, generally, and that’s wealth redistribution. But if you can show me a politician who will voluntarily sign up for wealth redistribution policies, which are really unpopular, then I’ll eat my hat, unfortunately.
Jason Hartman 26:06
Well, Megan, what kind of hat are you wearing? Because, you know, it seems that we’ve got, we’ve got one in office. And we’ve also got one running, who is talking a lot about that. The problem is it just never works. They can’t seem to ever redistribute in any sort of equitable fashion. You know, it always ends up hurting the people they pretend to help it seems like.
Megan Greene 26:31
Yeah, I mean, these policies are really unpopular politically, um, one thing that could help is infrastructure spending as well, in everyone’s favor of infrastructure spending until you talk about how you’re going to pay for it. And then it becomes more controversial, but two years ago, and I was in DC, suggesting that US focus on infrastructure spending, people looked at me like I had 40 heads. Now it’s much more mainstream, actually, Obama put it in his list of desired budgetary items. And with the last budget, and we won’t see it before the US election, but we might see it afterwards.
Jason Hartman 27:03
Interesting. Interesting. We’ll see where that goes. What are your thoughts on real estate before you go?
Megan Greene 27:07
Well, I do think that the housing market is undergoing a recovery. According to this invest investor sentiment survey that we’ve just put out, actually, the you know, the one investment that’s overwhelmingly popular is owning your own home. We’ve had really good economic indicators coming out, related to the housing market in recent months. And you know, some of it might be investors trying to front run the Fed, which is set to hike soon. So trying to lock in a mortgage before rates go up. Realistically, those who are holding mortgages won’t be that impacted by a 25 basis point hike. Most mortgages, if they’re variable are linked to long-term rates. And, and in the past, when the Fed has hiked short-term rates, long-term rates have popped up to you. But I think that that will not be the case, this time around. I think long-term rates will remain low for a really long time. So mortgage holders won’t be as affected by a rate hike, as some people are worried about. But I do think everybody’s hoping for the housing recovery to come and really drive this recovery. You know, we’ve relied on that before. And it’s turned out really badly for us. But I think, generally, we know that the baby boomers are contributing less to demand for housing than they have in the past. So that’s peaked. And generally, Gen X is smaller than the baby boomers. And so if you just look at it from a simple supply-demand perspective, we’re not going to have the kind of demand for housing that we’ve had in the past. So it’s a recovery, but we’re not going to see the kind of recovery that we used to benefit from back in the boom days.
Jason Hartman 28:35
Yeah. And when you say housing, I think it’s important to distinguish owner-occupied housing versus apartment rentals, because the rental community is booming. And you didn’t mention Gen Y, you talked about Gen X and the baby boomers. So there that was very valid, I thought, but you’d look at Generation Y moving into the housing market. And they’re saddled with huge student loan debt, you know, lower-wage jobs, mostly. Wow, I just think that ain’t what it used to be, you know, the idea of homeownership. I mean, it’s I’ve maybe we’re moving toward a renter society, not to mention the fact, you know, I always say, the best thing you can have on a resume, if you’re applying for a job is mobility. And being a renter makes you more mobile than being an owner. So, thoughts on that?
Megan Greene 29:20
Yeah, it does. I mean, if the housing market is buoyant, and actually, you know, you can sell your property and move somewhere else. But you, one of the reasons that the US economy works much more flexibly than for example, the eurozone is that we do have freedom of mobility, which Eurozone technically has, but it doesn’t really in practice. We think nothing is picking up and moving across the country in the US and that has certainly helped us in this recovery as people go to where the jobs are. So you know, I do think that this housing recovery will be sustained. But it’s just not going to provide this for part of growth that you know, some people have hoped for based on past experience, and that’s not enough. such a bad thing? Yeah,
Jason Hartman 30:01
I agree. I agree. Very good. Megan, give out your website, tell people where they can find out more.
Megan Greene 30:06
Yeah, sure, you can find out more about this better survey and all the business that we’re doing on our website at www dot john Hancock dot com.
Jason Hartman 30:14
And Megan, are there any questions? I didn’t ask you anything you just wanted to say, you know, did you want to talk about health care or, you know, any things investors should be concerned or optimistic about in the future? You know, just just last word for you?
Megan Greene 30:27
Yeah, sure. I mean, when we asked investors what their biggest worries were actually most of them were personal and related to saving or planning for retirement. So the cost of health care was at the top of the list. But the cost of long-term care in nursing homes was also cited as a real concern for investors. Political gridlock is still a concern. And I guess that will crystallize as we hit the debt limit. And when December 11 comes, and if we don’t have a new budget, by the end, we might face a government shutdown. I think it’s unlikely, but that will cause volatility. But I think most of the real risks to the US economy and markets are exogenous. So I think, you know, investors should also be looking towards China, which is trying to prop up its economy, its equities, markets, and its currency at the same time. And also, I think investors should keep an eye on Europe, which hasn’t fundamentally addressed the issues that caused the eurozone crisis, and now they’re facing the biggest refugee crisis that we’ve seen since World War Two. So there are a lot of risks coming from outside of the US that investors should keep an eye on too.
Jason Hartman 31:30
Excellent points. Megan Greene, chief economist with Manulife and John Hancock asset management. Thanks for joining us.
Megan Greene 31:36
Thanks for having me.
Announcer 31:39
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Announcer 31:47
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Announcer 31:49
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Megan Greene 32:00
I know I mean, how many people do you know not including insiders who created wealth with stocks, bonds, and mutual funds? those options are for people who only want to pretend they’re getting ahead.
Announcer 32:11
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Announcer 32:47
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Announcer 33:37
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This show is produced by the Hartman media company All rights reserved for distribution or publication rights and media interviews, please visit www dot Hartman media.com or email media at Hartman media.com. Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax legal real estate or business professional for individualized advice. opinions of guests are their own. And the host is acting on behalf of Empowered Investor, LLC. exclusively.