Economist Kotlikoff: A recession will require panic, and one may be coming

Economist Lawrence Kotlikoff, a professor at Boston University and the founder of Maxifi, says that "irrational exuberance" is something that routinely returns to the market, which is why so many crises over history get labeled with the word "panic," and while he does not see current conditions leading to that yet, he does think the market and economy have significantly more downside risk than upside potential right now. Kotlikoff, a prolific author on the markets and economy, says investors should be taking advantage of high real returns on inflation-protected bonds and less interested in a stock market that feels like it is building a bubble. He also discusses the future of Social Security, which he has researched extensively, and says it needs a complete overhaul, because the math on short-term fixes gets ugly for individual Americans fast.

In an extended Money Life Market Call, Tom Plumb, portfolio manager for The Plumb Funds — Plumb Equity and Plumb Balanced — discusses finding "disruptive growth companies," and notes that while everyone wants to assume that all artificial-intelligence related stocks are "disruptive," the reality of who will be the ultimate winners and losers amid the new technology is less clear than the market currently makes it out to be.