Nobel laureate Robert Shiller credited President Donald Trump with boosting American consumers' confidence.
"Trump has brought back a big feeling of American confidence," the Yale University professor of economics recently told Bloomberg Television.
“It's a psychological phenomenon that it's hard to predict. It's been strong. I think it has something to do with the politics with Donald J. Trump, who models conspicuous consumption, who wrote books saying you got to show off a little -- that was his advice to everyone,” said Shiller, the co-founder of the Case-Shiller Index, which tracks home prices around the nation.
Shiller said Trump has done everything possible to bolster and sustain Americans' economic confidence.
For Trump to do anything more, Shiller said "he has to get cooperation from Congress or the Fed and it's gotten to be such a fractious atmosphere."
As for general overall economic forecasting, Shiller said it's difficult to get a good read.
"It is hard to predict right now. I think this is one of the hardest times for forecasting to work because it involves a change in our national makeup," said Shiller, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Eugene Fama and Lars Peter Hansen in 2013. "And a new emotion is playing strong. The emotion of anger that affects consumption decisions and investment decisions as well," Shiller said.
"Talk is more political and less economic now. But it does look like markets are kind of fragile, late stage exuberance in the stock market and the housing market," said Shiller.
"There is there's a sense of fragility there. And similarly with the housing market which is starting to slow down."
For his part, the president regularly takes to social media to tout his economic accomplishments or chastise the nation's central bank.
"The only problem our economy has is the Fed. They don’t have a feel for the Market, they don’t understand necessary Trade Wars or Strong Dollars or even Democrat Shutdowns over Borders. The Fed is like a powerful golfer who can’t score because he has no touch - he can’t putt!" Trump tweeted late last year.
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