What kind of moron expects to read that the bottom is here, the recession is going to end soon?
The supposedly oh-so-smart economists who (as you point out) didn’t see this coming.
They’re operating off stats from post-WWII recessions and trying to draw off patterns of these prior recessions.
What none of them are observing is that this is different. None of the post-WWII recessions before this one were debt deflations. None of the prior recessions involve the implosion of the financial centers and major banks of the world. None of them involve huge bubbles in real estate; overpriced real estate, maybe, but huge bubbles as we’re seeing now? No.
None of the prior recessions involved leverage to the levels we’ve seen in the last 10 years, especially in Europe.
But these economists want to put all that aside and still try to use prior recessions as patterns for how this is going to play out.
Agree 100%. Being an average Joe, since 1Q 2006, watching the prices of food and energy climb and wages remain basically stagnant, coupled with the continued and government led flood of illegals, interest only loans and such, it did take a rocket scientist to figure what was coming. By the end 2Q 2007...it was apparent to me a recession was starting.