PIMCO's "new normal," as technically defined, hasn't happened—at least not yet. While overall global growth was muted last year (2.2% last year compared with 3.2% for the decade before the 2008 crisis) demand for stocks and bonds was robust, largely stoked by central bank action.
Data compiled by Bloomberg found that "fixed-income securities around the world returned more than the average of the past 16 years in 2012, and the value of global equities increased by $6.5 trillion as the MSCI All-Country World Index rose 13.4%."
PIMCO, which oversees the world's largest bond fund and manages $1.9 trillion in assets, coined the term in 2009 to describe sluggish global growth and lower investment returns for the foreseeable future.
What they didn't foresee, according to the news service, were the steps central banks would take. Citing Bianco Research figures, Bloomberg notes, "policymakers from the Federal Reserve to the People's Bank of China pumped more than $6 trillion into the global economy as they bought everything from Treasuries to gilts, boosting their balance sheet assets to $14.09 trillion as of June 2012 from $4.99 trillion."
At the same time, the central banks kept global interest rates at about record lows, driving investors into riskier assets such as stocks, junk bonds and mortgages.
But the bond giant is sticking by its original prediction.
In his 
