The most telling thing about the pummeling that the stock market has taken recently, and especially this week, is that there’s no simple single cause to point to.
That reflects the fundamental economic risk for 2019 and beyond. There isn’t a lone caution on the horizon that can be identified and monitored and that policymakers can respond to.
Rather, markets reflect a widening sense of unease that several different types of risks are rising at once — and that although any one of them might be manageable, together they could lead the economy into serious trouble in 2019 or 2020.
