BlackRock’s Larry Fink is worried about economic ‘malaise’ ahead

BlackRock Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink is confident inflation will subside but fears the global economy is headed toward anemic growth as geopolitical circumstances evolve and central banks around the world take years to unwind fiscal stimulus.

At the Dealbook Summit in New York on Wednesday, the leader of the world’s largest asset manager warned of waking up to a “2ish-3%” world with “3-4%” inflation as monetary policymakers scale back aggressive bond purchases from the past decade.

“We’re actually going to enter a period of more, what I would call, malaise,” Fink said.

In addition to central bank woes, Fink cited a collapse in birth rates globally, a shift in China from what he deemed an economic-minded economy to an ideological one, and the energy crisis in Europe as some other areas of concern.

“My biggest worry is not that we are not going to see a fall in inflation back to 3-4%,” Fink said after raising doubts about the U.S. Federal Reserve’s ability to achieve its long-term price stability target of 2%. “My biggest worry is that the world is losing hope.”

Fink’s remarks underscore a view expressed by his institution Wednesday about what they see for the global economy in 2023: a “new regime” of more significant macroeconomic and market volatility, and central banks that no longer come to the rescue during slowdowns.

“The Great Moderation, the four-decade period of largely stable activity and inflation, is behind us,” strategists at BlackRock’s Investment Institute led by Phillip Hildebrand and Jean Bolvin said in their 2023 outlook. “A recession is foretold; central banks are on course to overtighten policy as they seek to tame inflation.”

BlackRock stated that it was tactically underweight stocks for this reason — a portfolio positioning revealed earlier this year. While the money manager expects to turn positive on risk assets at some point in 2023, it no longer sees the sustained bull markets of the past.

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“After we get out of this burst of inflation, it is my fear that we are not going to have the ability for any fiscal stimulus for any time soon,” Fink told journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin at the Dealbook event. “Deficits do matter, and at the same time, the central banks are going to take years in which they’re going to have to unwind all their quantitative easing, all their bond purchases that they did over the last ten years, and aggressively over the last few years.”

He added that this means they will not be fully-equipped to restimulate the economy while rates are expected to be fundamentally higher than where they currently are.

“They’re not going to go down,” Fink asserted. “We’re just not going to have an economy that is based on real growth.”

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Alexandra Semenova is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @alexandraandnyc

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