$2 trillion Pimco money managers Bill Gross and Mohamed El-Erian, the co-CEOs, are warning investors to prepare for the coming lean years of slow, low growth and austerity. Specifically no recovery until 2022. 

Warren Buffett and Jack Bogle first mentioned a “new normal” with slow, low growth back in 2002. It fell on deaf ears. Since the 2008 meltdown the same warnings are coming from gurus like Grantham, Gross, El-Erian and others. Ignore their warnings at your peril.

Here is a summary of 10 points picked up from meetings with El-Erian and Gross: 

1. America fell in love with a Goldilocks economy

As early as 2005 Pimco warned that investors, voters and politicians had fallen in love with “a Goldilocks economy, the notion that markets were in a long period of growth and stability, neither too hot nor too cold.” El-Erian “never believed the bull” about wise “world’s central bankers and the seemingly endless growth of emerging markets.”

2. Economists predicting 3% to 4% growth are misleading America

Pimco was “quick to see, post-2008, the passing of an era,” says Foroohar. The unthinkable was happening: “The U.S. flirting with default, unlimited central-bank money dumps were suddenly happening.” Worse, today “while most experts (including those within the Obama administration) were plotting how to move from recession back to the trend growth rate of 3% or 4%,” Pimco concluded that a low 2% growth will probably be the New Normal “not for a couple of years but for decades.”

3. Warning: Too many investors, banks, politicians still in denial

Many investors are still disappointed with their nest eggs, in denial, ignoring Pimco’s message, trapped in wishful thinking, hoping for a return of the short-term bull-bear cycles common in recent decades, unwilling to face the harsh reality of the New Normal with slow growth everywhere: consumer spending, jobs, government revenues, corporate earnings, stocks, bonds, commodities, even America’s role in the world.

….read 4 to 10 HERE