Is the double dip coming?

Altucher is an unusually useless pundit, in a generally useless field. His comment implying that 1982 was worse than the present from an investor's viewpoint shows extreme misunderstanding of finance. Then we had 15% long term treasury rates, and an extremely depressed stock market. Times were bad, right? No doubt about it, they were. But the S&P sold at a PE10 of about 7 versus today's 20+. And long term governments would return $15,000 or so on a $100,000 investment. Contrast either of those metrics with today's. The situation was was serious. Whether it was worse than today IMO is highly debatable. What is not debatable is that then we were well paid to run those risks, and today we eat grass.

Ha
 
haha said:
Altucher is an unusually useless pundit, in a generally useless field. His comment implying that 1982 was worse than the present from an investor's viewpoint shows extreme misunderstanding of finance. Then we had 15% long term treasury rates, and an extremely depressed stock market. Times were bad, right? No doubt about it, they were. But the S&P sold at a PE10 of about 7 versus today's 20+. And long term governments would return $15,000 or so on a $100,000 investment. Contrast either of those metrics with today's. The situation was was serious. Whether it was worse than today IMO is highly debatable. What is not debatable is that then we were well paid to run those risks, and today we eat grass.
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But then again, maybe they are!:LOL:
 
kcowan said:
Wasn't the jobless stats helped by the 48000 census takers?
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Sorry to bump an old thread, but looky what I found...
EmployRecessAlignedApril2010.jpg
 
:DYou know what is funny. I had bought my Dads business in 1980. I went through 1982 never knowing anything about how the economy was doing. It is different today I can assure you. In 1982 there were jobs. The city I live in has lost 9000 jobs since 1998. They will never return. Textile jobs. These jobs were held mostly by hard working uneducated people. I do not know how others are doing in the US but here it is not good. The other strange thing is I have never seen so many people driving cars. I think every family here has one per person. How are they doing it is beyond me. Old trig
 
oldtrig said:
The other strange thing is I have never seen so many people driving cars. I think every family here has one per person. How are they doing it is beyond me. Old trig
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I think it may be a mass psychosis.

Ha
 
I have a pretty radical solution for the problem of spending too much time in the car. I pretty much refuse to go farther than 10 miles one way, and I don't even go that far very often.

Ha
 
Not sure what value looking backwards has ... but this really struck me:

What do we mean by "liquidity rallies?" There is a certain amount of economic foundation to this market action. The government pumps money into the "system" and it finds its way to Wall Street in order to leverage speculation for quick profits.
As the stock market rallies, it appears to many observers that the market is predicting a grandiose upswing in the economy. As it turns out, though, the speculative fervor generated by easy money only makes stock prices go higher -- it does not fix the economic woes. Once the economic data refuses to improve, the market realizes that it has overshot on the upside and another, usually slower, bear market unfolds.

The liquidity rally of 2009-2010 extended farther than we thought it would, eventually rising more than 80% off the March 2009 lows.
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The rest of the article does some vague historical comparisons ... enjoy!

History paints a bleak picture - MarketWatch
 
The ECRI numbers I follow ain't looking so hot. ECRI | Resources . The ECRI folks are saying double dip yet. But if these leading indicators persist in weakening, I think they'll be saying so before too long.

As of yesterday, ECRI is still saying no second recession this year. As far as they see the economy is still expanding. So I guess if it happens it might be next year.

Lakshman Achuthan points out that we have already had a longer expansion since the end of the recession than we had between the 1980, 1982 double dip.

Audrey
 
oldtrig said:
:DYou know what is funny. I had bought my Dads business in 1980. I went through 1982 never knowing anything about how the economy was doing. It is different today I can assure you. In 1982 there were jobs. The city I live in has lost 9000 jobs since 1998. They will never return. Textile jobs. These jobs were held mostly by hard working uneducated people. I do not know how others are doing in the US but here it is not good. The other strange thing is I have never seen so many people driving cars. I think every family here has one per person. How are they doing it is beyond me. Old trig
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Seeing the poor housing numbers and the number of people in cars makes me think they're not driving but living in them. :D
 
IndependentlyPoor said:
Good news for a change?
Calculated Risk: Chicago Fed: Economic Activity increased in May
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I truly hope it's good news, but....

Admitedly half of the things they measure were negative. A couple of the positives mentioned were employment and housing. Probably positive due to census hiring and housing incentives.

Even the consumer spending might be skewed. In my world here, families are moving in together and the kids have extra money all of a sudden and they love to spend it.

Production indicators up perhaps as a result of restocking because previous months were so bad.

Above all, none of the sytemic problems are even being addressed. No real production, no real credit being extended, no debt reduction, no none gov't or service sector jobs being created.....

I'm not convinced yet.
 
Pete said:
Even the consumer spending might be skewed. In my world here, families are moving in together and the kids have extra money all of a sudden and they love to spend it.
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Interesting to read about what people are observing in their own corner of the world. From what I have read, I would imagine economic impacts are particularly drastic where you are, in California (as revealed in your profile).
 
W2R said:
Interesting to read about what people are observing in their own corner of the world. From what I have read, I would imagine economic impacts are particularly drastic where you are, in California (as revealed in your profile).
Click to expand...

In my corner of the world, I think that we are starting to feel the second dip. Government workers and contractors have started to be laid off in large numbers and the housing market seems to have slowed down again.
 
Here in southeast Louisiana, the oil spill is expected to result in a crippling effect on the foundations of our economy - - fishing, tourism, and oil industry employment and support. The housing market is very slow IMO and it just seems to be getting worse.

Still, I haven't personally heard of anybody here moving in with their family (and blowing money on "stuff") as a clear result of recent economic problems, losing their house, and so on. Not to say it hasn't happened, but just that I haven't seen it happening.
 
FIREdreamer said:
In my corner of the world, I think that we are starting to feel the second dip. Government workers and contractors have started to be laid off in large numbers and the housing market seems to have slowed down again.
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Even as the "recovery" was underway, it was obvious by looking at state and local governments that another shoe was going to drop because the private sector rebound just couldn't be strong enough to avoid that. Whether it was layoffs, pay cuts or benefit cuts or whether it was higher taxes, there were no options that weren't going to create a tougher economic climate.

The day of reckoning for state and local government budgets appears to be here. The can can't be kicked down the road any more. No options are anything but very unpleasant.
 
ziggy29 said:
Even as the "recovery" was underway, it was obvious by looking at state and local governments that another shoe was going to drop because the private sector rebound just couldn't be strong enough to avoid that. Whether it was layoffs, pay cuts or benefit cuts or whether it was higher taxes, there were no options that weren't going to create a tougher economic climate.

The day of reckoning for state and local government budgets appears to be here. The can can't be kicked down the road any more. No options are anything but very unpleasant.
Click to expand...

They interviewed some of those laid-off government workers on local TV the other day, and those people were dejected. They kept saying "we thought we had job security, you know". Some of those people worked for the Federal government too (NASA I think).
 
FIREdreamer said:
They interviewed some of those laid-off government workers on local TV the other day, and those people were dejected. They kept saying "we thought we had job security, you know". Some of those people worked for the Federal government too (NASA I think).
Click to expand...
That is one real bummer of a reality check. Many of us in private industry have long known we have to keep our skill sets relevant and our resume up to date at all times. I'll bet some of these folks never bothered to do so because of the different culture that led them to think the job was there as long they wanted to keep it -- and they fully intended to retire there. Now they are sucker punched in the gut and I'll bet a lot of them are ill-prepared.

Still, in at least some of these positions, I'll bet some of them are offered a recall if things turn around, as opposed to the private sector offshoring the new work to India or China when demand picks up or giving the job to some cheap college intern. (Then again, if the private sector keeps doing that, the tax base to fund the public sector never *will* recover.)
 
audreyh1 said:
Lakshman Achuthan points out that we have already had a longer expansion since the end of the recession than we had between the 1980, 1982 double dip.

Audrey
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Just out of curiosity, has it been officially determined that the recent (or current) recession ended? I hadn't heard.
 
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