ShareFor the last few months I have been casting around looking for bullish data points as counterfactuals to my more bearish long-term outlook. I have found some, but not enough. If you recall, early this year, I stated that we are in depression, making the case for the ongoing downturn as a depression with a [...]

ShareIt has been my thesis for some time that we are seeing a secular change in consumption patterns in the United States.  This will have grave implications for a world economy used to seeing the American consumer as an economic growth engine and consumer of first choice. Retail sales in the United States have fallen [...]

ShareThis is a translation of a Spanish-language article from Finanzas.
For UBS, there is no debate about the economy’s green shoots despite the improvement in employment and the slowest fall in consumption and industrial production. In a harsh report on Spain, the Swiss bank says that the worst is yet to come, and that unemployment will [...]

ShareI love this guy. If you are looking for a guy who is super bearish on the U.S., then David Tice is your man.  He sees unemployment at 15%, stocks well down from present levels and a serious Depression with a Capital-D in the offing.  In short, he’s talking about a financial and economic catastrophe.  [...]

ShareA recent poll which ended on Wednesday as to when the economy will recover yielded the results below:
Clearly, you think this downturn has legs!
Please feel free to ping us with other important questions we should be asking readers.
Cheers.
Edward

Update: 3 Apr 2009: I have been getting more positive about the possibility of a cyclical upturn before 2009 is over (what I like to call a fake recovery). Meanwhile, the punderati are seeing black when they should be seeing shades of grey. As a result, I wanted to re-post this article as a reminder to all of you and to myself of the perils of becoming wedded to a certain ideological bias.



Also see the following article on the site Overcoming Bias.



Here’s the original post:



For a long time Byron Wien of Morgan Stanley used to have his “Ten Surprises for” whatever year we were about to enter. The predictions were sometimes head-scratchers and they were definitely ‘out there.’ Most of the time, these predictions ended up being wrong. Now, Saxobank has taken over from Morgan Stanley in this department. Their list is outlandish — and I’ll get to it in a moment. But, first, I want to say these predictions serve a very useful purpose. It’s called thinking outside the box.

Back in February I posted an article called “The bullish argument for the global economy” highlighting Goldman Sachs’ Chief Economist Jim O’Neill’s bullish view for the economy. O’Neill believed in February that a economic rebound was certainly possible due to fiscal and monetary stimulus. Paul Kasriel has made similar arguments.

While I do agree that fiscal and monetary stimulus have been great and may induce a cyclical rebound, I wanted to point out that he mentioned the Philly Fed Survey and the ISM surveys as potential leading indicators of recovery.

ShareThe jobs picture is looking grim. Jobless claims for the week ending 14 Feb 2009 were 627,000, pushing the average to 619,000. Additionally, nearly 5 million people are staying on the unemployment roles, the highest figure ever. But, it should be a given that jobless claims have increased in this cycle — [...]

Today’s Globe & Mail does an excellent job of presenting the three different potential outcomes for the global economy, one optimistic, one pessimistic and a third somewhere in between. Below are the key snippets of their article reflecting each of the three outcomes. However, I highly recommend reading the full article which is linked below.

The Chief Economist of Goldman Sachs sat down with the FT’s David Oakley and had a go on a number of topics from the financial crisis, investments in Emerging Markets, the future of the Bric (Brazil, Russia, India and China) economies, to the global economy.

Below are links to the three-part video series on the FT website. I think the videos are well worth watching.

Enjoy.