Joe Biden’s spending spree will lift American spirits and markets – but it comes with a sting in the tail

New US president Joe Biden is planning to throw trillions of dollars in stimulus at his country’s economy. Markets will love that. But it comes with a catch, says Merryn Somerset Webb: rampant inflation.

Joe Biden
Joe Biden’s appeal to the markets is all about the money
(Image credit: © Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Imagine you are a global equity investor. You look to America and see stockmarkets at or near record levels on every measurement; you see a global health pandemic, which the US appears to be managing particularly badly; and you see a nasty economic contraction, which has floored the retail and hospitality sectors and wreaked havoc on the labour market.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.