Yahoo Finance Shiller on risk: 'There's something about the Donald Trump experience'
American economist and 2013 Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller thinks that the presidency of Donald Trump has led Americans to grow more accustomed to risk.
“There’s something about the Donald Trump experience,” Shiller said on Yahoo Finance’s Market Movers. “He models risk-taking behavior. … The conclusion people are drawing is: You don’t have to be that careful. You can survive. If you say something that turns out to be wrong, it doesn’t matter.”
Trump has made over 5,000 false or misleading claims since taking office, according to the Washington Post. Recently, Trump denounced his own government’s death toll from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico as a move by the Democrats to make him look bad, without citing any evidence of a lower death count or politicking.
At the same time, the president’s apparent Teflon to slough off scandals, conflicts of interest, evidence of incompetence, and other issues that would doom traditional political figures is well documented.
Shiller says this mindset is reflected in the market, which he considers overvalued.
“I think Trump encourages us to be more risk-taking” when it comes to investments, said Shiller.
Shiller’s hypothesis that this thinking may have seeped into the public consciousness.
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Ethan Wolff-Mann is a writer at Yahoo Finance focusing on consumer issues, retail, personal finance, and more. Follow him on Twitter @ewolffmann.
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