Posted on 08/12/2012 5:35:34 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
Five years into the Long Slump it almost seems as if we are back to square one.
China is sufficiently alarmed by the flint hardness of its "soft-landing" to talk up trillions of fresh stimulus. The European Central Bank is preparing to print “whatever it takes”to save Spain and Italy. Markets are pricing in an 80pc chance of yet more printing by the US Federal Reserve in September or soon after.
There is no doubt that the three superpowers acting in concert can launch a mini-cycle of growth early next year - assuming they deliver on their rhetoric - but twin headwinds of debt-leveraging and excess manufacturing plant across the globe cannot easily be conjured away.
The world remains in barely contained slump. Industrial output is still below earlier peaks in Germany (-2), US (-3), Canada (-8) France (-9), Sweden (-10), Britain (-11), Belgium (-12), Japan (-15), Hungary (-15) Italy (-17), Spain (-22), Greece (-27), according to St Louis Fed data. By that gauge this is proving more intractable than the Great Depression.
Some date the crisis to August 9 2007, the day it became clear that Europe’s banks were up to their necks in US housing debt. The ECB flooded markets with €95bn of liquidity. It seemed a lot of money then. The term “trillion” was still banned by the Telegraph style book in those innocent days. We have since learned to swing with the modern dance music from central banks.
The defining moment was twelve days later when yields on 3-month US Treasury bills to crashed from 3.76pc to 2.55pc in just two hours. At first we thought it was a mistake, a screen glitch. Nothing like this had happened before, not during the crashes of 1929 or 1987, or after the Twin Towers attack
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
The Baraqqi Depression grinds on.
They’ve used Rhambo’s “don’t waste a crisis” scheme quite well to attempt to push the US over the tipping point of takers vs givers.
Spending $1.40 for every $1.00 of revenue on EBT, TANF, disability, Medicaid, 99ers, “green” subsidies, and dozens more.
We’ll know in November if they succeeded.
A strong American economy will help lead the world out of this. Romney and Ryan need to highlight this. A boom here will help Asia. It won’t solve the european crisis, but it will help. Whenamerica lags, the world follows.
I have to be honest...I don’t see this “Great Recession” thingy. I have a job. I live in an apartment complex near my job. I have plenty of food for Bar-B-Ques just as all my neighbors do.
Now granted...most of my neighbors don’t actually work like me...but they do just about as well. I seldom see them in the mornings but I see them in the evenings and hear their music late into the night.
They aren’t bad people - they often give me a piece of BBQ chicken and offer investment advice for one of their new “projects”. Sure...my gas tank seems to lose gas a lot without my driving much but I attribute that to the humidity.
OBAMUNISM
~ Equality In Poverty ~
Most of the “enlightened” western world has bought into the notion that you can borrow and spend your way into prosperity and the bill will never come due.
We will not survive another four years of Obama and a Democrat led Senate. Tell Grandma you’ll take care of her when she’s sick, because Medicare will be broke long before it’s predicted collapse in 2020. Voting Democrat will only hasten its demise.
I'm fortunate enough that this past year has been our best business ever...but I also know that is a total fluke, and I have *no trouble* seeing the recession "thingy".
In fact, I saw it just this weekend when I drove to Tallahassee for my son's graduation from FSU and, while driving through town, noted tons of businesses boarded up.
Maybe you're one of the lucky ones. I know that I have been thus far. But, to tell you the truth, I don't feel one bit comfortable running on luck.
A Republic that does not enforce CRIMINAL Law is full of Bananas.
How many arrests have been made to punish those who knowingly and deliberately facilitated the fraud that was packaged into all that Subprime a$$paper that’s presently poisoning the global economic pond?
Instead of criminal prosecutions we see “settlements”.
SHACKLE the JACKALS!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.