Massive Layoffs Today- Your thoughts on the economy?

I'm pretty sure if you didn't have a job, you wouldn't have gotten robbed.

 

I read some articles by Dr. Doom on the dollar carry trade yesterday and it's been bumming me out.

It's been on Zero Hedge for a while, but I take his stuff more seriously.

 

I'm challenging the "we're". Until employment starts to rise, there are just too many people not recovering to agree. Companies and people with jobs are doing much better. Productivity is doing better. If you use the term "we", I am going to look at people. The jobs appear to be coming, but the economy doesn't exist in a vacuum so I do worry something will change before the jobs get here.

 

Relax sir. Its Nokia Siemens Networks ... shouldn't have any effect on Siemens IT

 

I know. But I'm sure Darin is probably hearing it from people that saw the article.

 

riiiiiiight.




the commercial real estate bubble hasn't popped yet.

 

What are they? Too big to flail?

 

The good news is that the rich continue getting richer through all of this, so no worries.

 

Well, then try not to watch or listen to Niall Ferguson's segment with Charlie Rose, it will make you fugging suicidal

This ain't another recession, jobs or no jobs nothing short of much higher taxation and a REAL fiscal policy that aims to balance the budget from here on out will work. But, as Ferguson explained, unlike China we have no political will to make and implement necessary but unpopular policies.

 

We're recovering, huh? The personal credit bubble hasn't popped, real unemployment is near 20%, banks are holding on to foreclosures because they can't unload them, and we have a ton of mortgage rate resets for 2010 and 2011.

The government hasn't done anything to fix the underlying problems, they've just propped things up and delayed the reckoning - maybe until the health bill gets passed?

There are no fundamental reasons for the DJIA and the S&P to be back at the levels they are - people are being duped. A jobless recovery? Pshah! How are people without jobs going to pay for their houses and pay off ridiculous levels of credit card debt (which is getting harder and harder to obtain)?

The only questions in my mind are what and when. The government has spent us into a huge hole - and I suspect that being democrats, they will try to tax us out of it just like they did in 1937 when they crushed the economy that was trying to recover from the Great Depression. That probably can't happen until next year.

There is widespread optimism in the country - I just came back from big government loving Washington state - but the truth about how bad our fundamental problems are will come out.

I don't trust the stock market, metals have gone up enough that I don't want to buy them right now, and the US dollar is on the verge of no longer being the chosen currency of world banks. I'm choosing real estate to hedge against hyper-inflation as a decent choice in a world of uncertain ones.

 

no question of that...that always lags too.

that will have a fraction of the effect the home mortgage bubble did.

how can anyone seriously argue we aren't recovering?? the sky was falling a year ago. we now have a growing GDP and we're quibbling about how much it grew. that is marked improvement from a year ago when giants were on the brink of collapse.

 

Personal credit bubble? You mean credit cards?? If we're at 20% unemployment and rates are being pushed to 30%, I'm thinking that baby is pretty hard to pop. But even beyond that, it's unsecured debt. It does not undermine the wealth of the average American the way the home mortgage bubble did and does.

I'm in the business of buying distressed financial assets. I can tell you banks aren't doing anything yet. It's not that they're trying to unload them and can't find a market...it's that they're waiting. They did this in the late-80's and early 90's as well...and trust me, the market is there for them. There are a lot of people who are very very aware of how much money people made off playing that game out of the last mess and recovery who are chomping at the bit to make sure they don't miss it this time.

Again...jobs lag. They always do. They have in every recession we've had where unemployment has risen. Every time. It's all happened before, and it will all happen again.

 

growth is a good thing, but you also have to consider what we grew from. It's like biggest loser; hey it's great you lost 10 pounds, but you still weigh 350.

 

absolutely true...but does anyone remember the dire doomsday predictions of a year ago?? have we all forgotten that? do you remember how giants "too big to fail" were on the brink of failure??

i wrote something in a thread around Sept/Oct of last year about how by next year at Christmas we'd see some growth in the economy...and was laughed at.

look, i'm not saying that everything is roses...but to fail to acknowledge that the economy growing over the last quarter is evidence of some real progress is to put your head in the sand...or to be blinded by some kind of partisan thought. i'm not suggesting that obama has saved us or anything like that...this is just the way these things go.

 

Comments from a smarter person than I on October 29th...

 

i agree. This isn't doomsday and I don't think I will be eating my neighbors young for sustenance any time soon. But there are still some concerns out there. It would be great if politicians actually put together some effective plans to help jolt the economy now

 

Drop out
go underground
grow your own

 

I saw that as well. It's hard to argue with his logic. We're broke. I found it interesting that he stated that we are financially worse off now than Great Britain was after WWII.

 

Keep in mind that this could happen in the next 5 months or the next 5-10 years.

Pretty nasty stuff. You almost have to hope Pope Bernanke has the financial gods on his side.

 

In a bit of irony, we are succombing in much the same way as France before the revolution. Unaffordable wars coupled with an overweight beuracracy and political gridlock with respect to solutions.