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Drawing striking comparisons between the Japanese economy in 1988 and the American economy today, a new book by an author who predicted the current crisis warns it's going to get much worse before it gets better. Vox Day, a WND columnist, asserts in "The Return of the Great Depression," by WND Books, the U.S. is only now entering the early stages of the Second Great Depression. Day presents a fact-rich case, rooted in economic history and time-tested theory, in which he concludes that an economic contraction of very large proportions is presently developing. But he contends that "due to a...

How Much Juice Is Left In This Bear Market Rally? By Bill BonnerOctober 23, 2009 10/23/09 Waterford, Ireland – Since it peaked in 2007, the UK stock market lost 60% of its value. As of yesterday, it had recovered half of what it had lost. All over the world, the story is about the same. Markets have recovered half or more of what they gave up. The US is a laggard. While the S&P is up 60%, the Dow isn’t yet at the halfway point. Some foreign markets, meanwhile, have 100% + gains. Fund managers who missed the rally are...

It is difficult to know what to be most shocked by in the gross domestic product figures published by the Office for National Statistics this morning: the fact that we are in the longest-lasting deepest continuous recession in recorded history or that no-one in the City foresaw it*. Leaving aside the City’s failings, with which we are intimately familiar, the scale of the economic collapse is disturbing. The National Institute for Economic and Social Research has been calling this a “depression” rather than a recession for some time – these figures surely now underline such a description. A brief look...

3 signs of the next real estate collapse The latest bubble is about to burst, but this time it's in the commercial market. Here's how to see it coming. By Katie Benner, writer-reporter October 22, 2009: 10:16 AM ET NEW YORK (Fortune) -- When the FDIC closed Chicago's Corus Bank last month, it may have signaled the beginning of the next shock to the banking system: commercial real estate defaults. Corus, whose balance sheet was larded with bad construction loans, is just one of many banks that have a slew of this debt on their books. Refinancing the $2 trillion...

Unemployment rose in 23 states last month as the economy struggled to create jobs in the early stages of the recovery. While layoffs have slowed, companies remain reluctant to hire. Forty-three states reported job losses in September, while only seven gained jobs, the Labor Department said Wednesday. Some of the states that lost jobs still saw their unemployment rates decline, as discouraged workers gave up looking for work. People who are out of work but no longer looking for jobs aren't counted as officially unemployed. That trend was evident nationwide in September, as nearly 600,000 people dropped out of the...

Research Firms Predict Sad Christmas David BodamerOct. 20, 2009, 3:09 PM Most of the major predictions are now in for the holiday shopping season. Here we’ve put together a roundup of what various trade associations and research outlets are predicting. Projections range a bit this year. Some groups are calling for a slight decline, other say sales will be flat and some say sales will show a slight uptick. In part, the differences stem from the different way the groups look at the numbers. ICSC and Retail Forward, for example, looks at same-store sales while the National Retail Federation looks...

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US Hyperinflation? By Chuck Butler10/20/09 St. Louis, Missouri – The finance ministers of the Eurozone met yesterday and they’ve tried to stem the euro’s (EUR) rise… But they’ll need more than words to get the job done! And so we begin a new day… Front and center this morning, the currencies – which had given background overnight to the dollar – are back in rally mode, and are taking liberties with the dollar once more. For most of the night, that was not the case, though. The dollar had rallied back and sent the euro, for instance, to the 1.48...

A Big, Fat Stock Market Selloff By Eric Fry 10/20/09 Laguna Beach, California – Stocks prices are very, very high… Our contrarian colleagues over at The 5-Minute Forecast continuously lament…which means that the collective anxiety of investors is very, very low. Our colleagues don’t mind that a rising stock market is adding trillions of dollars to the asset side of household balance sheets. That’s good news. But the worrisome part is that a falling stock market could erase those trillions from the ledger just as quickly as they first appeared. And as our colleagues correctly point out, rising share prices,...

Once in a while, a book comes along that shakes so many of your core beliefs that you are left questioning either the integrity of what you have read or your own knowledge. In this particular case, I had the privilege of a sneak peek at The Return of the Great Depression by Vox Day and with most certainly can state, it is the latter. RGD as it shall be referred to from now on, as can be inferred from its title makes a very compelling case as to the state of our economy and where this nation is potentially...

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Jack Bogle published "The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism" four years ago. The battle's over. The sequel should be titled: "Capitalism Died a Lost Soul." Worse, we've lost "America's Soul." And worldwide the consequences will be catastrophic. That's why a man like Hong Kong's contrarian economist Marc Faber warns in his Doom, Boom & Gloom Report: "The future will be a total disaster, with a collapse of our capitalistic system as we know it today." No, not just another meltdown, another bear market recession like the one recently triggered by Wall Street's "too-greedy-to-fail" banks....

The Greatest Depression Is Coming by: Mac Slavo October 17, 2009 Mac SlavoGood times will not be returning any time soon. We continue to lose jobs month over month. And, while the statistics being released are showing a slow down, this is basically a fabrication. There are thousands of people falling off of unemployment compensation each week — none of them are reflected in the official numbers. Shadowstats.com estimates unemployment is above 20%. Take it for what you will, but these numbers are rapidly approaching the unemployment rate during the last well known depression. Credit is contracting. The last decade...

Foreclosures hit another all-time high in Q3 with almost 938,000 homeowners filing, according to Realty Trac. This rose at a substantial 5% clip from Q2. If you're aren't feeling the pain, perhaps you don't live in one of the six states that accounted for 62% of nationwide foreclosures alone: California - down 1.5% Florida - -0.7% Arizona - +5% Nevada - +9.8% Illinois - +13.7% Michigan - +9.5%

This global recession will turn into a "full-blown depression," Nicu Harajchi, CEO of N1 Asset Management, said Friday, adding that global stimulus hasn't come down to Main Street. Wall Street is making money, while consumers aren't, Harajchi told CNBC. "We have seen the G20 coming out with cross border capital injections of $5 trillion this year… But a lot of this money hasn't really come down to Main Street," he said. "When it comes down to corporate America, corporate Europe or even in Asia, in Japan, we are not seeing Main Street making any money," he said. "Consumers are losing...

Another Great Depression Low, Beware Getting Your Salary Slashed By Rocky Vega 10/14/09 Stockholm, Sweden – According to the New York Times, “now pay cuts, sometimes the result of downgrades in rank or shortened workweeks, are occurring more frequently than at any time since the Great Depression.” What does this mean for you? Well, for Bryan Lawlor it has meant taking a 50 percent pay cut, down to $34,000 per year. The government holds up our weak “recovery” statistics and when it comes to the tragic realities facing the average American it’s just the same refrain… deny, deny, and deny...

The U.S. Department of Commerce said Wednesday that retail sales fell 1.5 percent in September, compared to a 2.2 percent gain in August. The demise of the Cash for Clunkers program, which had spiked auto sales in August, was one reason for the decline, according to a new release Still, the result was better than the 2.1 percent drop economists had

Are Stocks Ripe For Another Black Monday? By Simon Maierhofer Tuesday October 13, 2009 Investors usually see red when Wall Street has a 'black' day. There have been a number of black days, such as Black Monday, Black Thursday, Black Friday and Black Tuesday. Even though the various black days have been spread out over centuries, there's one thing they all have in common. They arrived unexpectedly. If they were expected, they wouldn't be considered 'black.' Black Mondays In finance, Black Monday refers to Monday, October 19th, 1987. But did you know there were actually three Black Monday's?[snip]

Stock Market Bull Trap Heading For A 50% Crash To 5,000 Stock-Markets / Financial Crash Oct 13, 2009 - 11:00 AM By: Captain_Hook At the risk of getting ahead of myself prior to being able to confirm the turn, I am suggesting stock market action over the past week bears the distinct odor of a bull trap, with even informed technicians still waiting for a push to 50% retracements on the indexes. In this respect then, you should realize the context of such a bull trap would be profound in that we are talking about the March lows being tested...

Published: October 13 2009 03:00 | Last updated: October 13 2009 03:00 Weak demand from battered consumers will be a "major constraint" on the US economy for the foreseeable future, a key White House adviser said yesterday. Lawrence Summers, the director of the National Economic Council, has been banging the drum for the $787bn stimulus package in the face of Republican criticism that it is not creating the jobs it promised. With political pressure building as unemployment nears 10 per cent, the administration is looking for extra ways to mitigate the problem, though it insists there will be no "second...