Polling seems to indicate a jump in consumer confidence in the US, and some countries have already reported positive GDP. If you had doubts in the last year, are you more secure about your short-term future now? Being somewhat dependent on the auto industry in the US, I've been seeing signs of a pickup, and overall, I feel better about the next few months. As an aside, I'd credit the stimulus plans for a fair amount of this, as well as the bailouts for averting the cascade of bank failures that was nearly inevitable.

The stock market rebounded and I believe that house sales went up recently (?) so there are some indications, but as far as first hand experience, it's as bad as it's ever been. Anyone seen those tent cities?

Quote: Original post by HostileExpanse
If you had doubts in the last year, are you more secure about your short-term future now?

No, I'm not more secure. My faith in long-term turnaround remains unshaken, but the near-term prognosis is still pretty dismal from where I sit.

Quote: Being somewhat dependent on the auto industry in the US, I've been seeing signs of a pickup, and overall, I feel better about the next few months. As an aside, I'd credit the stimulus plans for a fair amount of this, as well as the bailouts for averting the cascade of bank failures that was nearly inevitable.

What about C.A.R.S.?

The signs are definitely pointing to the UK being out of recession and some are saying it's already finished, what we need now is the proper quarterly examination of the figures to accurately prove this.

The UK recession is believed to have started sometime around May 2008 even though it didn't become official until January 2009 [rolleyes], so it's been more than a year now. Given all the steps the BoE have taken, I can't believe there's any further down we can go to.

Personally? I follow the obvious truth that out of recession != out of the woods. Just because your economy is growing doesn't mean it's healthy, and the UK economy is absolutely and totally fucked to the point of me looking at emigration. If I get a job at all, I will earn paltry money and get brutally raped by the taxman in return for no services whatsoever. I can then retire at age 75 onto a pension of £2.50 a year. Mind you, this has always been the case with the UK (i.e. ludicrous taxation in return for fuck all) but it is now getting more pronounced due to the utterly disastrous fiscal situation we are forced to endure here day in day out.

I am so excited for the future, I can hardly sleep!!!one

Quote: Original post by Oluseyi

Quote: Being somewhat dependent on the auto industry in the US, I've been seeing signs of a pickup, and overall, I feel better about the next few months. As an aside, I'd credit the stimulus plans for a fair amount of this, as well as the bailouts for averting the cascade of bank failures that was nearly inevitable.

What about C.A.R.S.?

Yeah, that's one of the stimulus plans I credit. Hopefully things do pick up without such programs, because the winter slow period for retailers is fast approaching.

I'm afraid the housing market is going to drop again once the new buyers' credit is dropped

C.A.R.S is the biggest farce out there. It just gave taxer payer money to a small segment of the population. People that were going to buy a car next year, bought this year, reducing car sales in the future. Bailouts just steal from tomorrows generation for today's benefit.

I'm not a fan of bailouts, it benefits few (mostly the rich). We'd have hurt more but for a shorter period of we had just let things go. The government is just trying to re-establish status-quo, but its not coming back. Consumers are saving (a good thing) and mostly buying what they need (another good thing). Spending 110% of ones income is likely not going to happen again for a long, long time. Foreclosures continue to climb. Unemployment is closer to 15% then the wonderful heavily manipulated government numbers.

We've basically copied Japan from the 1990s and they're now into a 2 decade recession. I believe we'll come out faster, but more like 5-12 years from now. We'll likely see the US dollar destroyed with 10 trillion in debt from the government alone in the next 10 years. Last month China dumped 25 billion of long term treasuries. This month it got 35 billion of shorter term ones. If they don't prop up the dollar as they buy hard assets on the back side (copper, iron ore, oil contracts, etc) and IMF SDR (Special Drawing Rights)(Totaling 7.3 billion to date but they have stated interest in a low more) funds they risk losing a lot of wealth.

World GDPs are mostly going up from government spending, which is NOT a good thing. More debt is NOT what we need. We need less of the stuff that caused all this. Its sad that few in charge see this. I cannot find the article I read a week ago but it basically said instead of the 1.x% GDP went up recently, if you factor out the government debt, would be -6.4%. Yup, road to recovery is coming fast and hard.

Gah. Sorry tired of all the talking heads who were clueless to begin with (including Bernanke). Analysts have manipulated the data, counting monies owed in court rulings as assets and making companies beat their expectations. Love funny accounting. Most companies "made" money (but a lot less then previous years) this quarter mostly on write offs, We'll see how well they're really doing next quarter. But insider trading on the S&P 500 says its not looking well. Last reported, 43% of insiders (management, etc) had sold 80% of their shares.

Sorry for the rant. My friend refuses to listen to me. He has a lot of money in the market (after losing a lot the first time around and not listening to me, I got out at the peak and have been enjoying this dead cat bounce, but have started bailing now). Most indicators point to this bounce ending and a downturn coming soon (few months). I spent 2 hours trying to convince him to at least put in trailing stops on his stocks.

I'm keeping resource stocks, just like my father. But otherwise I'm bailing. He is shorting the market (bank stocks and stuff I believe, not completely sure nor really care) while I move to the dollar (if things crash the dollar should jump as people rush to it for safety like last time) and hard assets (buying some land, gold and silver). I'm not a doomsdayer mind you, I have 2 weeks of food but we live in a very active earth quake zone and it was actually my wife's idea.

Anyways... (I'll likely have to fix a lot since I just vented haha)
</rant>

Quote: Original post by Mike2343
C.A.R.S is the biggest farce out there. It just gave taxer payer money to a small segment of the population. People that were going to buy a car next year, bought this year, reducing car sales in the future. Bailouts just steal from tomorrows generation for today's benefit.

Well ... I suppose that'd be true if there were absolutely zero people who -- for example -- had a price limit in their minds of $10,000 for the Ford Focus's that have been selling for roughly $12k or so early in the year; vehicles which would likely have been brought down under $10k due to CARS incentive.

Quote: Original post by Mike2343
I'm not a fan of bailouts, it benefits few (mostly the rich). We'd have hurt more but for a shorter period of we had just let things go.
...Unemployment is closer to 15% then the wonderful heavily manipulated government numbers.

People who lived through the financial collapse of the 1930's and it's attendent 25% unemployment might take a different view of how well complete disaster was averted in our present situation, and how much potential pain Average Joes have been spared.

Then, of course, we can note that the only full-blown casualty of the crisis would have been Iceland, which was a champion of nations as far as "free market" thinking and tried taking a different route than bank bailouts.

[Edited by - HostileExpanse on August 26, 2009 1:15:55 AM]

CNN Video on Ships not moving

Trains locomotives are being put into storage in greater and greater numbers. The busiest ports in America are running at near stand stills. I'd see recovery if the lights hadn't been turned off.

<quote>Well ... I suppose that'd be true if there were absolutely zero people who -- for example -- had a price limit in their minds of $10,000 for the Ford Focus's that have been selling for roughly $12k or so early in the year; vehicles which would likely have been brought down under $10k due to CARS incentive.</quote>

Your still missing the point. These are future sales pushed to today. So we will likely see a depression of sales next year. Those that buy vehicles today won't buy new ones next year (unless their idiots). I don't under stand the mentality I guess.

Most economists that seen this all coming (and there were not many) also state that the federal governments New Deal lead to a prolonged depression and they have a lot of valid arguments. So we can agree to disagree. I believe we didn't end the recession until after WWII when all the vets came home and started businesses. I also believe we're in what should be classified as a recession. Then again this is only a minor correction, errr, large correction, errr recession. My bad. Moss, err green shoots are everywhere. As long as you don't look at foreclosures, unemployment or real earnings of companies of course (but if you listen to analysts we're booming! Too few analysts, economists have been fired. With how poorly they are predicting (weathermen do better!) things they really need to be standing with others in the unemployment lines).

Even the "savior" Bernenke says we can expect to see 1:1 job growth:loss for the next 5 years. So we'll be at 15% unemployment for atleast 5 years and in a consumer based economy that doesn't look positive. By Christmas we can expect over 1 million peoples unemployment benefits to run out, unless the Fed extends benefits again (and further puts us in debt). We need to adjust to the new reality, we need to MAKE something to trade, debt is out and won't work again.

Edit:
I guess we'll see if CARS worked in a month or two when all the inflated numbers of car sales return to "normal" (depressed levels we had been seeing before this bailout) or if they are greatly increased.

Quote: Original post by Mike2343
<quote>Well ... I suppose that'd be true if there were absolutely zero people who -- for example -- had a price limit in their minds of $10,000 for the Ford Focus's that have been selling for roughly $12k or so early in the year; vehicles which would likely have been brought down under $10k due to CARS incentive.</quote>

Your still missing the point. These are future sales pushed to today.

Even as a simplication, that sort of explanation serves as an inaccurate grasp of the economics.

Quote: Original post by Mike2343
Most economists that seen this all coming (and there were not many) also state that the federal governments New Deal lead to a prolonged depression and they have a lot of valid arguments.

....and, AFAIK, the (credible) economists of that camp still cite the stimulus spending programs of the New Deal as being helpful for the economy.

Quote: Original post by Mike2343
Edit:
I guess we'll see if CARS worked in a month or two when all the inflated numbers of car sales return to "normal" (depressed levels we had been seeing before this bailout) or if they are greatly increased.

I don't think anyone is claiming that the economy will suddenly enter a 2007-style boom .... but that's quite a different thing from saying that the bailouts have been some sort of massive failure.