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Rosenberg: "Welcome To The Latest New Paradigm - Jobless Prosperity"
And...
HAS ISM PEAKED?
And if it has, will the bullish Wall (and Bay) Street strategists change their views (and will their masters let them?). Strategist after strategist came into our offices ages ago with the doctrine that it didn't matter whether or not ISM was sub-50, just by rising, it meant that conditions in the industrial sector were improving even if still contracting. Well, it's amazing how many "don't worry, be happy" notices we got yesterday, for even if ISM did decline for the first time this year, from 52.9 to 52.6 in September, it is still signifying expansion in the manufacturing sector. Ostensibly, for product-pushing Street economists and strategists alike, what matters at the margin is only when the diffusion index is moving up -- not when it's moving down. Now, how are we sure that the ISM has very likely peaked (as auto production crests – it does indeed now look as though motor vehicle production, which had been the primary factor boosting output and the manufacturing surveys, has now been totally realigned with sales)? Well, because the best leading indicator for the index lies in two of the components -- orders which dropped to 60.8 from 64.9, and inventories which rose to 42.5 from 34.4. In other words, the orders/inventory ration tumbled to 1.43 from 1.89 in August.
Folks, that is the largest one-month decline in the ISM orders/inventory ratio since December 1980! The ISM was 53 that month – the next month it went to 49.2 (is that in the market?) and seven months later, we were in the early stages of the famed double-dip recession (which nobody saw coming at the time). Food for thought.
Must read full report from David Rosenberg and Gluskin Sheff:
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i kinda liked his title of "thud, dud, and crud"
A recoveryless recovery?
yep - you speak orwellese....
One photo sums it all:
http://i37.tinypic.com/x3sf2g.jpg
another bear bites the dust
The latest from Larry Summers' former business partner (Nouriel):
and 2% is not enough to shrink unemployment....
I really am having a difficult time stomaching Nouriel anymore... if I hear him waffle one more time on whether this is a U-shaped, V-shaped, L-shaped, great recession, mild depression, double dip... I think I may have to do something drastic :-) He is almost as bad as CNBC... arghhhh.
It's actually quite sad.
He's really lost his focus since he became a celebrity.
he knows how to throw a good house party from what i hear...
agree minnesota...he is waffling way too much.
DH - He is a part of the club now. You understand this dynamic and how it plays out. I am willing to wager that if he had anonymity we would hear the real. RGE, are you hearing me? I had to tell NR that his faith in his business associates in the administration was misplaced, now I hope he understands better why I said what I said.
I think he now gets more calls from Larry Summers than Party RSVPs.
i think miles and bonddude have hit the nail.
NR jumped the shark a while ago. Nassim is the only "outlier"...Enjoy Istanbul Nou Nou..
Taleb is still a voice of reason.
yep... he's become quite a call girl's dream.
lol....damn him with faint praise...
This is what happens when you stop telling people what they need to hear and begin telling them what they want to hear.
I understand we all want to be loved but this is ridiculous.
sgt_doom says it below.
no one is immune to hubris.
Sadly, he's a bigshot now.
And when you're that popular, the last thing you want to do is screw it up by making a wrong forecast.
Thus he hedges his forecasts with all kinds of disclaimers and caveats, unfortunately rendering his opinions virtually worthless in the process.
He's basically trying to straddle the bull/bear fence because he doesn't want to get it wrong.
Until he gets over this seemingly debilitating fear of being found fallible after all, he's best ignored.
jmo
Sadly, he's a bigshot now.
And when you're that popular, the last thing you want to do is screw it up by making a wrong forecast.
Thus he hedges his forecasts with all kinds of disclaimers and caveats, unfortunately rendering his opinions virtually worthless in the process.
He's basically trying to straddle the bull/bear fence because he doesn't want to get it wrong.
Until he gets over this seemingly debilitating fear of being found fallible after all, he's best ignored.
jmo
Roubini, member of the Bretton Woods Committee? That international lobbyist group of the ultra-rich? The most anti-worker, anti-union organization in existence?
The Roubini who occupies a tenured position funded by Soros?
Hmmmm....now why ever would he be waffling?
The 2% is statistically insignificant. Below noise and below what money the fed can print to create inflation that is not shown in the ppi deflator.
Garbage. He and Summers want jobs as heads of whatever will be the new Fannie and Freddie. Millions in salaries, money printed by the fed, and absolutely no accountability to anyone. The only qualification needed is political jack.
I think people are just mis-capitalizing the recovery shape. It should be u, not U. Which language has the long-tailed u ?
Isn't that Greek? And, is it just me, or are the CAPTCHAs getting harder?
It's not Greek, it's Tajik Cyrillic, you boob.
That would be the Che with descender of course.
It sounds like the very beginnings of justice.
In his dream.
keep it down - you might wake someone up.
Rosie must be feeling the heat. Seems to me that his last couple of pieces have been more shrill than normal. There's a bad typo on the first page; the market was testing 12 year lows in March, not highs.
He says 850 on the S&P 500 would be interesting. To be as bearish as he is (correctly IMO) I'd think he'd be looking for something a lot lower than that to get close to fair value.
i didn't pick that up at all....i thought he
laid out a measured case for why things are not
as rosy as the pom pom girls would have you
believe...he digs deeper into the data than
the headline writers...
regarding his comment on 850 he used the word
interesting for very good reason...it easily
leaves open the possibility for lower numbers
but i suspect that it is the first point at which
to re-evaluate market prices for any possible
reassessment...it was very amorphous terminology
for a reason...
green sharts - i think rosie is referring to March 2008, not 2009
Now, lets get on a meta-level and ask the following question ( your opinion would be awesome )
a) Is the West dying
or
b) Is it already dead, but kept on a life support for sentimental reasons ( read as, has not left a will )
Somewhere between A & B, a terminal illness. I don't see how the math works for the U.S. economy to grow enough to work down the public and private debt and meet unfunded commitments like Social Security, Medicare, unrealistic state and local pension commitments, etc.
But I don't know that it's just the West. China and Japan have economies that are based in large part on selling stuff to the West. I suspect much of China's recent stimulus spending will turn out to have been thrown away. I could see massive unemployment and political unrest in China in the not too distant future. Japan is a basket case even after a 20 year mostly deflationary period.
It's not dying. Just getting old. Europe is already old. Japan is old. The US is moving into middle age.
Growth and energy will be found in emerging economies, which are young and hungry.
We can't make the mistake of thinking that things changing, even for the worse, means that everything is coming to an end. The U.S. will be here 100 years from now. Some of my grandkids will likely still be here to see it. And contrary to what many around here seem to think, they won't be paying for things with gold dubloons.
For some reason, we're good at picturing things all going to hell and blowing up in some apocalyptic manner, but poor at picturing a more straight-forward long-term quality-of-life decline. I wish we could picture it better, as it would make it easier to combat it.
We have the oldest population in the United States, per capita, here in Allegheny county. Older than many Phoenix and Miami area retirement communities.
As a barometer, it may point to a relatively lower middle class economy in many cities suffering the same lethargy, with continual funding problems, monstrous legacy costs at our doorstep for government pensioners, no growth to speak of, the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs and population decline over the last 25 years, dependent on healthcare and education as the bedrock for employment, a gradual swing from a producing county to a consuming one.
If this is any indication of what many cities in the US are headed for, then our glory days ended in the 1980s and we have been adjusting as a county to a reduced standard of living than we had back then. It has that retired, somewhat crumbling, lethargic mein of the cities on the continent, without the history, art, and culture. The county lives for its football team.
Nice people with no great ambitions to speak of. Altogether not a bad place to live if needs are one's primary focus and wants are not too outlandish.
A household income of $50,000 is more than enough to satisfy most of the needs of the hundreds of communities in this and surrounding counties with very low cost of living.
I'll bite Cheeky...
You and I both know it's a "Dead Man Walking"
So... b)
And very observant of you to notice that they have kept the patient alive to make sure that the will transfers the assets to themselves and the liabilities to the American public.
The sooner we end this charade and return to fiscal sanity... the sooner we can start to rebuild.
The question is will the same doctors be staring at the patient when the bloody stub of what is left of it finally reopens it's eyes?
Usually don't refer to CNBC but.......
http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1275511738&play=1
Jim Rickards weighs in on where the dollar is going.
The USD a second tier currency.
The Fed no longer the "biggest" central bank.
the US Consumer no longer the biggest driver of consumption.
Hey, McDonalds will still have the $1.00 menu.
Excellent link, my dear snorkeler, but Prof. Michael Hudson, America's foremost macroeconomist, has been saying the same exact thing (long before what's-his-face began repeating it) for quite some time.
SDR's -- both for replacing the USD and for int'l currency arbitrage.....
hudson has some good views about
restructuring taxes to eliminate the dominance
of rentier activity in our fire economy....
however, if he is in favor of sdrs then i am
disappointed...that is nothing but a shell
game of replacing the dollar problem with
another brand of toilet and fly paper....
I interviewed a RGE econo about this. Shes says it's years off:
http://www.alternet.org/story/140876/will_the_%27dollar_wars%27_kill_wha...
This usually histrionic titles aren't mine. But the grief about Rube-ini explains why RGE has stopped answering my calls on the recession not turning into a depression.
how about:
c) Fatally parasitized -- with no remedy that isn't itself highly lethal -- and is likely to die shortly from internal hemorrhage.
Of course the parasite then dies with the host. Stupid f*cks.
cougar
I suggest that folks visit Bruce's latest contribution (maybe it contains an answer)
"An American Story"
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/american-story
America is an idea, as it lives on in our principles and minds it can continue to exist, but I am afraid our government is compromised and purchased with paper, and the principles we are following will lead us into bondage.
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.
The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad.
— James Madison (father of the US Constitution)
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through his sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependence back again into bondage.
Professor Alexander Tytler Penned over 200 years ago while the US was still a British Colony. (describing the fall of the Athenian Republic 2000 years prior).
"When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed.
Cheeky, we are not fighting a crisis of confidence, we are in fact fighting a crisis of character. When a majority decide on dependence over liberty, mankind looks to the state to solve its problems (which it can't). This majority is easily manipulated through television and too foolish to understand the big picture - they win elections by promising this herd to work for their interests (like a bribe). Schools are intentionally dumbed down so that the voting population is easier to control.
High taxes then drag down the producers so that eventually it destroys the incentive for initiative and new company formation - the parasite and host should collapse together, but with political leverage they managed to give record bonuses through bailouts.
I see the banking payouts as a recognition that this might be the last hoorah, like taking all the valuables off the titanic before it sinks. Of course, if we all think this way it will only expedite a collapse. What value does "FDIC insured" have now? If they are actually negative on reserves, it would be the opposite of insurance and would be a liability right?
Right now everyone with assets is considering their options for lifeboats including gold, offshore real estate & PM, other countries to reside in.
I had moved my money to Wells Fargo when they were the only AAA rated bank, but now I am considering alternatives - all based on credit worthiness not savings rates. That would be a good question for the faithful here, what bank are you using and what broker are you using - because we could have a GDII type event without the FDIC backing?
Why have they not outlined their position on backstopping deposits??? WTF??? Do they actually want a run on the banks, or do so few people have deposits that it is a non issue??? They were clear that the government would backstop big banks, but were not clear about money market funds or depositors bank accounts. I clearly don't want to start a run on the banks, but by the same token I won't be the one waiting in line at the bank to ask "could I please have my money back?"
A few years ago I made the move; started by searching http://www.bauerfinancial.com/btc_ratings.asp for 5-star banks in the area and visiting them to get a feel of management style.
Since then, I have come across this link that I have also passed on to friends/family: http://solari.com/blog/?p=1578
I always highly value your comments, but I have to say that I wouldn't mind a run on the Big Banks (although I acknowledge that it couldn't be contained just there).
Thanks for your thoughts Gilgamesh, I likewise always look at your comments and have a similar POV. I look at the Street.com ratings of banks as well, unfortunately it doesn't look like there are many options in my area and perhaps I should just drive an hour for peace of mind.
I would like to use a bank that only acts as a check clearing house and provides interest on deposits (lowest exposure, I don't need a loan). There is an incredible amount of exposure out there for both residential and commercial real estate that has not been recognized yet - many of the banks ratings will be lowered and they will be insolvent (those providing the loans with negative equity). The FDIC just broke the buck, and there is no official comment so the prudent thing would be to move to safety.
I'll pass on that one.
I really wish Fitts could have left the religion out of her website because it might have been a good source. Bush really had some kooks working for him.
The minute someone presents political viewpoints tightly coupled with religion it's an immediate FAIL IMO. Why not have one site for your religious beliefs and one for political and economic viewpoints. Separate church and state views.
Believe in the US Constitution and reflect your beliefs with your actions.
This is smaller potatoes I guess as it exists on a Florda state level, but when I read it this AM all I could think of is this is exaclty what is wrong with politics and by extension goverment at all levels today.
Granted, no surprise except perhaps that it is to be prosecuted.
Pete
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/florida/sfl-mendelsohn-moneyman-1...
"
The Mendelsohn indictment is the latest scathing condemnation of the Legislature's special interest-fueled culture, in which lobbyist money is the lifeblood. Former House Speaker Ray Sansom, R-Destin, is indicted on public corruption charges.
"Lobbyists play a major role in who's going to get elected," said Senate Democratic Leader Al Lawson, the Legislature's longest-serving member. "If (candidates) don't get money from lobbyists, they don't get money."
"
Regarding the backstop of deposits; there is a private sector solution in the works, however, its just a vale with a new bank that could ultimately be backstopped by govt intervention/stimulus.
http://www.reuters.com/article/wtUSInvestingNews/idUSTRE58I13720090919
dying, but then again maybe we've been in a Matrix-like environment for generations where West is an ideal only truly achieved by very few and "we" were therefore never alive.
Despite the debt overhang and the demographic/entitlement problems I think the West is most likely not in for a really acute crisis but relative decline - partly self-inflicted, partly an inevitable consequence of catch-up elsewhere. Think Britain since 1890 or so. There are much worse fates.
No, what should terrify everyone isn't so much the US as the new Britain but China as the new Germany. The Chinese leadership seems to be remaking the Rise of Prussia without realising it; at the very least, they don't seem to remember how the original movie ended. Apparently they're even planning to introduce a mixed-model system of democracy manipulated by the CP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_German_Empire Then all they'll need to keep the lid on the growing internal tensions of their enlightened technocratic-industrial Third Way megastate will be 1) uninterrupted economic growth and 2) a never-ending drumbeat of jingoism, military spending and foreign confrontation. What can possibly go wrong? Already the same educated twits are lining up to admire the new model: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/opinion/09friedman.html
the west is almost dead and is about to get it's feeding tube yanked away.
I've yet to see an analysis of the pump on financial earnings and equities as a result of FAS 157. That change alone distorted 2-3Q earnings with artificial ingredients. But to what degree did it affect the S&P overall earnings ( the e in p/e ) ??
I realize this is an issue bathed in opaqueness, but some reasonable analysis must be available somewhere. The lone example is the Colonial failure and that may be the extreme.
Having a handle on the relative size of the balance sheet puff is essential to forward valuation analysis. Could be impossible in the aggregate.....even FDIC doesn't know until the bell tolls. And it is always a moving target.
Resource ideas, anyone ??
But to what degree did it affect the S&P overall earnings ( the e in p/e ) ?? you may find your answer within the bowels of the standard and poors website. I do recall reading several sources that the financial sector's percentage of profits of the spx has steadily and dramatically increased over the past several years. the number could be as high as 40% but won't stake my life or your money on it!
FASB 157 impact as far as an organized study is not out there to the best of my knowledge. There were discussions by several of us on ZH in re WFC and the conclusion seemed to be that their Q1 (record breaking if I recall) profits were essentially due to change in marks.
I honestly don't think anyone, even the banks themselves, have a true idea of all the assets on their balance sheets due to the complexity of some of the asset tranches. I think there is a lot of WAG and SWAG in regards to these matters. I think we will at best see a slow discharge/writedown of these assets over a number of years in true zombie fashion.
some decent research
http://blog.atimes.net/?p=1161
Thanks for the lead, Ghost.
An Aug. 2 David Goldman piece was interesting. He feels that FAS 157 neither helps nor hurts financials. Apparently, he feels that affected banks are marking realistically and that tightening MTM will probably HELP bank balance sheets. I also went to a referred ATLANTIC article regarding the tightening measure by FASB scheduled for this Fall.
All sorts of contrasting commentary on a revision's effects on EPS.
Now I'm even more confused.
But I did take away that the Banks are fighting FASB on the reinstatement of MTM valuations. The Atlantic writer feels it's the biggest financial news of the year that nobody pays attention to at all.
Could be a long awaited "event".....or just lies formatted differently. Flip a coin.
rosenberg's reference to ma and pa kettle gives him new respect in my book....
rosenberg gets it....the monthly fluctuations are noise and often within sampling error such that those numbers are meaningless....but if you step back to look at the yearly data you can see that at best we are scraping along the bottom....once the dow corrects i wonder lei will look like then....
and when structural problems are acknowledged which are not easily captured in various data series you know that no durable - let alone any - recovery is at hand....
the recovery pom pom girls have mistaken an old botox filled, implanted, face lifted hag for grace kelley in her prime....
long live rosenberg....
excellent article - many thanks
David Rosenberg report ABOVE / Everyone needs to read the entire report. It is a very good economic and market summary. Thanks David, and ZH.
That's why I work in death and my wife works in taxes, it is not a question of IF, but WHEN...
Self-Reinforcing Jobless Economic Death-Spiral
Work is so passe'.
I think Rosie is talking 850 now.. But is maintaining his 600 call for later (when the can is against the wall and can't be kicked ahead any longer). Loved his snark this time around - especially since I think I know who the "oh pleases" were directed at.. Too funny..
Keep it up Dave!
he has been consistent over the past 6-8 weeks on the spx 850 in terms of his view of fair value.
But he argues that the S&P 500 was not a bargain at 666 in March as people are now claiming was obvious (in hindsight of course), that it was not nearly as cheap as at other stock market bottoms. So why does he think fair value 850 now?
I have tucked away Dougie Kass' comment to Kudlow that 666 would ge a generational low right after the bounce started.
About the last time I watched to CNBC too.
Pete
i bookmarked kass's call as well.
green...primarily based on fundamental P/E values as well as historical comparisons thereof.
you have to nail sp 850 before you go to sp 190.
Have you ever seen Goldman floor traders in the S&P500 pit step in and fill every ask during a panic? Essentially halting a decline. It haunts my memory.
"I'll fucking buy it all!!"
We'll never see 190.
Isn't it possible that 40% of the population will see an explosive recovery while the remaining 60% will be left to fight over the part-time jobs at the Grapes of Wrath?
We haven't been an agrarian society since long before Farm Aid. The horrors of the dust bowl came at a time when individual farms were no longer needed because of technological advances, and yet, we refuse to believe that the technological advances that would have wiped out the farmers sooner rather than later, with or without the dust bowl, could ever be duplicated in a fashion within the cities to replace.
Small Farmers were made obsolete by technology.
Technology is creating a situation where there are too many people (especially when you add seniors) for too few jobs (except for the part-time variety) and there will be no government money left for the "camps" of the Grapes of Wrath that we currently call homeless shelters because of the "comparatively" limited enrollment they currently enjoy.
technology is not at all the problem....the
problem is that the usa clings to a discredited
centralized soviet model of resource allocation
which prevents people from leveraging the
advantages of technology....
if left to sort out matters themselves, people
would use improved technology to improve
productivity, free people to solve new problems,
and create new industries with the new technology....
unfortunately, our soviet economy is being
tied with an anchor around its neck to old
failed models, businesses, and systems...
the oligarchs are doing their best to bring
back feudalism and the sheeple are sitting
on their butts whining about it....
My thoughts exactly. We are approaching the point where there is no need for everyone on the planet to work at a job in order to produce everything needed and most of what's wanted. The political consequences are enormous, and will be compounded by the fact that both people and jobs are not interchangable widgets. Try to think it through and your head will spin around like that little girl in "The Exorcist". Government-mandated 25-hour workweek will only push jobs overseas, unless we erect trade barriers. Something wicked this way comes. Glad I am getting old and won't be around to see the end game.
Here's jobless prosperity bankster style:
Ken Lewis Bonus: BofA CEO's $53 Million Pension Plan
http://tinyurl.com/yfmgwzo
Read more at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/02/ken-lewis-bonus-boa-ceos_n_3074...
He's calling the double-dip.
I can practically feel it in the air. It's got me completely creeped out. Like the eerie non-calm before some kind of massive storm, where everything -- living, nonliving, material and immaterial -- is moving at once in no obvious direction under no continuing impulse. Just moving as if that's the only thing left to do. As if the coming calamity could telegraph itself ahead of striking and set everything into motion on the mere threat of what is to happen.
Perfect storms are perfect because they miss nothing. Everything is hit, everything is moved, everything is tossed into the sea.
We've got a perfect storm on our hands. Sometime in the next 90 days it's going to roll over us and God help anyone caught exposed.
cougar
double dip?? where the fuck was the upturn to
dip from the 2d time?
OK... I'm holding you to it... I will hold onto my short position for 90 more days :-)
LOL
http://icanhascheezburger.com/2009/07/24/funny-pictures-unfortunate-choi...
OK Hephasteus... I am lmao... but not because of the picture... but because this picture got 185 comments... 185 comments on a questionable cat picture... don't these people have anything to do.. thanks for sharing :-)
LOL. I don't ever read the comments unless it's people writing a caption that sort of grosely misrepresents the behavior of the animal. Everyone was yapping about this vocal cat being cute while it was eating and I was like. Uh. He's telling the other cat he'll beat him up if he touches his food. LOL
We should put stock comments on there to see if it confuses them.
I'll buy those shorts!!!!!
That captures it perfectly. Nice writing.
October 12th will bring new meaning to the phrase free fall.
It's not V. It's not W. It's not U. It's not L.
It's backslash.
Everything Rosie writes is a must read.
I have breakfast with him almost every morning!
Jobless prosperity has been my long term theme for years. My standard prediction, DOW 36,000 and tribes of homeless wandering the land. In fact it is the tribe of homeless which will insure DOW 36000 and then who knows 100,000.
Now all that is cynical and dark and more a bad daydream, and I sometimes pretend I don't think it's possible but then........
At least show the other side of the story:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcGLbIOGVX8&feature=related
Apocalypse Now, that was great man. Of course I have read some of it before but great nonetheless.
+1000
As someone with little detailed understanding of the credit markets, I find it odd that both investment grade and junk bonds have recovered so completely, and, some of the stock market averages have recovered to close to levels prior to the collapse of 2008.
Is it too easy to go short or are the bubble makers still in full control?
My preference term is 'growthless recovery'. And it won't just be in the US.
Unless China finds a way to quintuple its average income, and teaches folks to spend like a sailor on shore leave, nobody is going to replace that former consumer of last resort, The American Shopper. Ninety-six percent of China's population earns less than $6000/year. A middle class worker in the US buys---or used to buy---pick-up trucks and big screen TV's and a new computer and cellphone every year or two. Upper upper middle class in China, at $6K/year, might get the phone. That's it. Sure 4% of China is still 50 million people, but the income graph (data on the far end is virtually impossible to get) seems to move slowly off that $6K base, so the number of Superconsumers is not particularly large (though quite visible in Hong Kong and Macau).
There's a whole lot of new factories, built on Chinese Stimulus money, waiting for a party that just ain't going to happen in the foreseeable future. And there's piles of commodities waiting to be melted and forged and pressed into something for somebody, but nobody is going to be buying anything from anybody. I see bad debts and angry workers in China's future (as well as a stock market that could barely stay alive even into the Grand 60th People's Celebration of Somebody Else's Self-Appointed Answerable-to-No-One Rise to Power).
I see bad debts and angry workers in China's future (as well as a stock market that could barely stay alive even into the Grand 60th People's Celebration of Somebody Else's Self-Appointed Answerable-to-No-One Rise to Power).
--
At that point, I won't be surprised to see some folks in the US help those angry workers in more direct ways.
If people want to know where the economy is going all they need to do is look at a chart of the Dow or SP500.
As the long term trend is down, the answer is simple.
http://www.zerohedge.com/forum/market-outlook-0
How do you avoid a double dip recession when your only source of growth is government spending and artificially low interest rates? Absent some type of innovation (ie. the internet, assembly line manufacturing etc) where is future growth going to come from? You remove the government action and the natural free fall continues. You leave it and it continues in slow motion. The stock market is reflecting a V-shaped recovery that just isn't currently possible. Anybody investing on the basis of what the bullish talking heads are babbling about on CNBC are toast once that reality is apparent. I wouldn't be suprised if we take out the March 2009 lows before March 2010.
the internet is possibly the most deflationary creation of all time.
Exactly. Many great fortunes were built basically on the ability to front-run activities or transactions with superior or more timely information. My avatar is still doing that. Still, when we reach the point where most new business sites are basically disintermediating portals that aggregate and disintermediate dog poop pickup services by scanning local yellow pages sites, is there maybe a point of diminishing returns, business wise, for the web? "No tree grows to the sky."
I agree long-term deflationary, but short-term both were a huge shot of adrenaline to the economy. I don't see anything out there comparable that would enhance efficiencies or stimulate excitement to the extent that you'd see businesses confident enough to increase hiring. Green energy isn't going to cut it.
I'm concerned about his initial statement:
"The rose-colored glass donning set of economists who have been talking about sequential improvement in the data and how “less negative” the employment numbers have become can’t say that after today (thank the good lord)."
Is the lord really good? If so why would we even have a depression/recession, cancer, AIDS, evil depreciating US Dollars, etc...?
What is The Berg really saying here? The good lord wants to see humanity in infinite pain and hardship? After all isn't the good lord responsible for creating us and he/she is ultimately responsible for our decisions and actions by answering prayers for forgiveness, direction, and guidance?
You lost me at Hello, Rosenberg.
Indeed, the Lord is good. The problems you recite are just the price He is prepared to pay so that you and I have free will. It follows (at least to me) that your fight to believe as you wish is precious and will be defended by me, even though we disagree.
Wall Streets Charts are like Main Street Charts just upside down... :D