Signs the Economy is Turning Around
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...s5qR_blog.html
by Steven Pearlstein
In case you haven’t noticed, the economy is actually getting better. Noticeably better.
Yes, it’s been painfully slow in coming, as we continue to tack against strong headwinds coming from Europe and the Middle East as well as the strong ebb tide created by the wind-down of fiscal stimulus. And certainly the recovery has been halting and uneven.
Economic data suggest the recovery has picked up speed. So why do politicians on both sides seem to cling to worst-case scenarios? (istock)
The data points for this optimism are to be found in recent reports on private payrolls (averaging just under 200,000 jobs per month for the past year), gross domestic product (growing at an annual rate of 3 percent), consumer confidence (as high as its been since 2008) and income (up 5 percent in the past year before adjusting for inflation).
On Wall Street, the Dow is at its highest point in nearly four years and Nasdaq at its highest point in a decade, reflecting both record profits and renewed investor confidence. Federal and state tax revenues are beginning to come in better than projected and households are continuing to whittle down their debt, with a savings rate of 4.5 percent. There are even enough green shoots in the housing market to suggest that residential construction might contribute to GDP growth this year rather than subtract from it. Revisions of government data are now reliably up rather than down.
If all you did was to listen to Republican presidential candidates (a cruel and unusual punishment, I realize), you would surely be under the impression that the country was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, businesses were barely getting by under the weight of excessive taxation and regulation, and most of the middle class was standing in bread lines. Their relentless demagoguery has undermined the recovery as much as the gridlock politics practiced by their Republican counterparts in Congress. When forced to confront the facts about the economy and the financial markets, the best response these jeremiads can come up with is that it could have been better.
The fact that employment, income, profits and confidence are all moving in the right direction means two things.
First, it means that fiscal and monetary stimulus succeeded in stabilizing the economy and financial markets. To say that they failed, or that they were unnecessary, is ideological nonsense.
Keep reading by clicking on link at top of page.
Gerald Celente 2012 Forcast
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvn01P3jKtg
Starts by noting that he hit all of 2011 predictions. Have a look.
House of cards............................
Nouriel Roubini’s Predictions for 2012
Hava-gafa-kasha "follows" this guy. He is one of his "favorites".
Nouriel Roubini’s predictions for 2012 are as dire as the can be. Nouriel Roubini, a.k.a. Dr. Doom, spoke to Bloomberg TV and said “we’re going into a recession based on my numbers”. Here is an excerpt from Bloomberg TV interview:
“We’ve reached a stall speed in the economy, not just in the U.S., but in the euro zone and the UK. We see probably a 60% probability of recession next year and unfortunately we’re running out of policy tools. Every country is doing fiscal austerity and there will be a fiscal drag. The ability to backstop the banks is now impossible because of political constraints and sovereigns cannot bail out their own distressed banks because they are distressed themselves.”
“Everyone would like a weaker currency, but if the currency’s weaker, another has to be stronger. There’ll be more monetary easing and quantitative easing done by the Fed and other central banks, but the credit channel is broken. The velocity has collapsed and all the extra money is going into reserves. There was asset deflation, but it occurred because the economic numbers in August started to improve even before QE was done. This time around the macro data is negative, so yes, the market is rallying on the expectation of QE3, but I think it will be a short-lived rally. The macro data, ISM, employment, and housing numbers will come out worse and worse, the market will start to correct again. We’re going to a recession, we are at stall speed and we are running out of policy bullets.”
Read it all here: http://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/20...ions-for-2012/