1. How is raising money in U.S. stock markets more difficult than in the rest of the world?
Even if productivity growth has risen, in order to justify the higher dividend growth assumptions necessary to justify the current valuation of the US equity market, one has to assume that, for some reason, return on equity can remain sustainably so high.
On Wall Street, it is indeed fashionable to point to the current high ROE as the explanation for the level of the stock market - this, after all, is what underlies the fashionable Economic Value Added approach to market valuation.
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