Indeed, this seems to be the proper complement of his other methodological piece on counterfactual analysis written at the start of his career, which I mentioned before.
Asset prices do appear somewhat correlated with volatility associated with the real economy and inflation. For example, equity valuations for U.S. corporations increased more in the past twenty years than in the two decades prior to the Great Moderation. The price-earnings ratio for S&P 500 firms averaged 14 from 1960 to 1984 and rose to an average of 18 from 1985 to 2006.