Catherine Rampell

So I don't know that that per se means it's a bubble.

Maybe this time is different, as people like to say, but it certainly doesn't look great.

And...

I just don't know how much longer it can be sustainable, particularly if this war keeps going, if you keep on having these kinds of disruptions, not only in energy markets, but in fertilizer, in plastics, in aluminum, in almost anything that you can imagine.

But now that said, if you look at the actual like hard economic data, not the market data, but what's happening to consumer spending or investment, it's not like it's falling off a cliff.

It's not great, but it's sort of like chugging along.

The job numbers that we got last week,

they were fine.

They were actually better than expected, but they still weren't spectacular.

There have been a bunch of big layoff announcements since then.

I think, who was it?

Walmart announced that they were going to be laying off a bunch of people.

Goodyear Tires, they're closing a plan, but I think it's closing next year.

So there have been a bunch of

big corporate layoff announcements, like, you know, how that shakes out relative to other kinds of job growth, I don't know.

But basically, the economy has not imploded, which is good, but it's still at odds.

It's okay, whereas stock markets are...

booming.

And the thing that I worry about is that, well, A, markets are just too ebullient, like they're too Pollyanna-ish, and that B, the actual economy is just like one more little shock away from a really bad crash.

We're not there yet, but it seems like there's enough fragility in the underlying economy that I'm worried about it.