Posted on 12/02/2008 7:30:24 PM PST by SeekAndFind
SINCE 9/11, A PALL of pessimism covered the U.S. Polls show that between 60 and 85 percent of Americans have believed that the U.S. is in a recession or would go into one the following year. But from September 2001 through August 2008, those polls were wrong.
Nonetheless, the failure of Lehman Brothers, with its ripple effect on money market accounts and confidence in the U.S. banking system, finally made this prognostication a reality. Rather than a prolonged recession, however, or one that is worsening, we’re seeing a temporary “V”-shaped recession caused by a sharp, fear-driven slowdown in the turnover of money, or velocity.
......
But events are more likely to unfold in a much more positive way. With a “V”-shaped recovery on the way, and corporate earnings unlikely to drop by anywhere as much as the bears believe, it will be the shorts that must capitulate in the months ahead. As a result, a “melt up” in equity values is much more likely than a further “melt down.”
ESSENTIALLY, WHAT THE U.S. is experiencing is a crisis of confidence. The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Survey fell to an all-time low of 38 in September, lower than its level in 1980 when inflation rose above 14 percent and unemployment was surging.
This is irrational, but it is understandable because the survey accounts for the period immediately after the President of the United States went on national TV and said people could lose their pensions, jobs, and homes. This was hyperbole designed to gain support for the $700 billion bailout bill.
Financial markets are healing, in part because the government has finally put so much money into them that they can’t help but heal. Moreover, they are healing because the problems at hand were never as bad as many have thought
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Send the photographer out to get a picture of that pall.
The author of this article is a complete and utter moron.
Let’s look at the background and experience of this utter moron :
Brian S. Wesbury (born, 1958) is a prominent American economist and economic forecaster.
He holds an M.B.A. from Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management, and a B.A. in Economics from the University of Montana. He began his career in 1982 at the Harris Bank in Chicago. He served as Vice President and Economist for the Chicago Corporation and then as Senior Vice President and Chief Economist for Griffin, Kubik, Stephens, & Thompson, a Chicago Investment Bank. He is now the Chief Economist at First Trust Advisors L.P, a financial services firm headquartered in Lisle, Illinois.
He was honored in 2004 by USA Today as one of the top 10 economic forecasters in the United States, and ranked by The Wall Street Journal as the nation’s #1 U.S. economic forecaster in 2001. He is a monthly contributor for The American Spectator magazine, and serves as the magazine’s economics editor. He is published regularly in the The Wall Street Journal, and is a CNBC contributor. McGraw-Hill published his first book, “The New Era of Wealth”, in October 1999.
Wesbury is a member of the Academic Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and also an adjunct professor of economics at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. In 1995 and 1996, he served as Chief Economist for the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress.
“With a “V”-shaped recovery on the way,”
That’s a assumption not yet in evidence. It is very likely that this downturn won’t respond to the usual tool of lowered interest rates. The cause of this recession is similar to what trapped the Japanese economy back in 1990.
No mention of the M3 money supply.
No mention of the banks hoarding the money that the government is giving them rather than lending it out.
He may be a well-trained economist, but he is either allowing his freemarket ideology to overrule his good sense or he is a shill.
My bet is that he is a shill.
I’m afraid I agree. This is irrational optimism. I expect we’ll get a bounce here, or fairly soon, but we won’t see the bottom for at last a couple more years. More likely 2012, in fact.
Trillions of dollars are being thrown down the hole, nothing is being done to fix the subprime problems, we still have to unwind about 500 trillion dollars worth of derivatives, and this is not just an American problem but a global problem.
I’d sure like to believe this guy is right. But the odds that he is are about zero, IMHO. And that’s assuming that Obama won’t deliberately make things worse.
He has the background but I think he is off the mark:
“What finally killed the consumer was not high oil prices (even though it did hurt car sales), or falling house prices, or tightened credit markets. What finally killed the consumer was fear. “
I find it incredible that he discounts the impact of losing the home-as-ATM and the ‘lending to anyone who can fog a mirror’ that fueled so much consumption in this last boom. That source of demand won’t be coming back until another generation of lenders lose their collective minds.
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He certainly doesn’t seem to be interested in any number of the factors that are fueling the recession. But that hasn’t been uncommon, the ones who were concerned about derivatives and loose lending tended to be the few economists who were warning of big trouble ahead. Roubini would be one, and he certainly isn’t optimistic about this recession.
My business partner’s wife is a Wharton Ph.D and she’s convinced that Obama will make the world a better place the day he takes office and that all will be well.
The guy is buying the BS that says you can inflate your way our of a busted credit bubble without any accounting for the bad debt that is still out there. His book released in 2000 revealed him to be utterly clueless. At the time he didn’t feel stocks were overpriced and that we were in a new era.
Karl Denninger is another one who thinks we are seriously screwed and he’s been right all along about what’s happening.
Thanks, I haven’t heard of Denninger, I’ll have to look for his writing.
Nassim Taleb, author of the Black Swan, is worth listening to. You can see some interviews with him at youtube.
Meanwhile, others claim there will be an “L” shaped recession. I’m gravitating towards a “V’’’L” shaped recovery, where the stupid actions of the present crisis come back later to do us in for good.
...but a happy one!
...which means he has a 50% chance of being right ...like any moron.
Don’t count on it. But I hope your nest egg recovers when you need it most.
This is irrational, but it is understandable because the survey accounts for the period immediately after the President of the United States went on national TV and said people could lose their pensions, jobs, and homes. This was hyperbole designed to gain support for the $700 billion bailout bill.
The author just contradicted himself in shifting the guilt of fear mongering to panic striken people.
The DoW is almost dead. One insolvant part of it is getting bailed out to oblivion of checks. The other part is getting screwed and taxed.
It’s a stock death spiral maintained by BS more than hurt by irrational panic.
It soon is going to be the government plantation, with leftists choosing to keep bad companies and dumping war strategic ones... because the current culture is to not even respect those who protect the country or the economy.
The culture of cheating is tanking everything. Just like with ENRON, no one is trusting anyone, it’s all corrupt.
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