The Big Sleep (1939) is a crime novel from Raymond Chandler (1888-1959); the title “the big sleep” refers to death. In October 2013, Société Générale‘s global head of asset allocation Alain Bokobza said that the end of quantitative easing will lead to a 15% stock market drop, followed by “the big sleep”— a long period of only limited economic growth.
 
Bokobza’s term “The Big Sleep” was picked up on several financial blogs, such as Zero Hedge.
 
   
Wikipedia: The Big Sleep
The Big Sleep (1939) is a hardboiled crime novel by Raymond Chandler, the first to feature detective Philip Marlowe. The work has been adapted twice into film, once in 1946 and again in 1978. The story is set in Los Angeles, California.
 
The story is noted for its complexity, with many characters double-crossing one another and many secrets being exposed throughout the narrative. The title is a euphemism for death; it refers to a rumination in the book about “sleeping the big sleep”.
 
In 1999, the book was voted ninety-sixth of Le Monde‘s “100 Books of the Century.” In 2005, it was included in “TIME’s List of the 100 Best Novels.”
 
Zero Hedge
SocGen: End Of QE3 Will Lead To 15% Market Drop, Surge In VIX, Followed By “The Big Sleep”
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/07/2013 09:19 -0400
(...)
Which is precisely the basis for the just released forecast by SocGen’s Alain Bokozba, which extrapolates what will happen when the Fed’s balance sheet stops rising, and applies the same drop to stocks as was seen at the end of QE1 (-16%) and QE2 (-17%) and concludes that the “end of QE3 would cost the S&P500 15%” and that following that, absent even more QE of course, “the US equity index should remain relatively flat, burdened by higher yields (rate hikes in mid-2015), a higher US dollar and limited earnings growth (Return on Equity is already high), but supported by better economic prospects and a new shareholder value cycle, staving off a bear market.” Or, as SocGen calls it, “the Big Sleep.”
 
Business Insider
SOCGEN: In A Few Months, The Stock Market Will Drop 15%, Then Go Nowhere For Years
MATTHEW BOESLER OCT. 7, 2013, 6:55 PM
(...)
Thus, a new report from Société Générale’s asset allocation team — which calls for a 15% correction in the stock market in the first quarter of next year, followed by a multi-year journey back to where the index sits today — may come as a bit of a shock.
 
In the report — titled “S&P 500: -15% in sight, then the big sleep” — SocGen’s global head of asset allocation, Alain Bokobza, explains how an unwind of easy money policies at the Federal Reserve and ongoing dysfunction in Washington will cause the stock market to languish.