FLG Has Never Been Impressed With Jeremy Siegel

Buttonwood comments on a Jeremy Siegel article in the FT, and raises some concerns.

It's not that FLG disagrees with Prof. Siegel all that much. FLG thinks he was too bullish on stocks even through the crisis. He, however, does agree that stocks are the best place for long term investment. So, it's not really a substantive disagreement.

No, the issue is that Prof. Siegel has bought into his own hype. The media attention and other things, such as everybody piling into his class at Wharton to hear what he has to say about the market that day, has gone to his head. If you listen to the interviews with him from Knowledge@Wharton, you cannot miss a certain smugness of somebody who is treated as a sage. What is so grating is when he parrots what is considered common knowledge on topics outside of finance and economics as if he had the same authority and was providing original insight. FLG particularly objected to his handicapping of the presidential race, and objected even more that his interviewers would always ask what he thought.

It's not that he doesn't have a right to an opinion on it. He's a smart guy and a citizen, so why not? The issue is that because he has some interesting things to say about the stock market, then he must have interesting things to say about everything. And even worse than that is that he seems to believe it himself.