top economists predict economic slowdown in 2019, possible recession in 2020. (employment, dollar, bias)
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U.S. factory activity at two-and-half-year low, points to slowing economy
The only morons are those who listen too the ones who never saw the hosing collapse. If you're going to listen to economists find the ones that called the housing collapse, find the ones that called the dot com bubble, find the ones who called the stock market crash. In other words listen to the free market economists like the Austrians.
Misery loves company.
There is nothing more miserable than the hate filled democrats wanting to crush prosperity to keep Trump from another term. Ten economist in the collective against one outside of it is a surprise. They could have easily got 100 to say the same thing. All jockeying to get the job Larry Kudlow has under a liberal democrat admin.
Given what a Great Salesman of Hope that Trump is, an economic recession might very well be to his advantage in winning another term!
No matter who's the President, if you look historically, recessions tend to come along every 8-10 years. We're way over due for one and the longer we wait, the more painful it will be!
The current pace cannot continue much longer. Those controlling the markets have reached the top in many markets.
They will release stories to the media about market weaknesses then pull resources which create a price reduction.
Then they will buy them back at a lower price.
Trump was NOT handed a "great" economy. He was handed an economy that had improved somewhat since the end of the Bush administration but still exhibited many metrics that were concerning. Unemployment had improved but GDP....not all that great! By the way, when was the last time any President "actually" addressed issues with SS, Medicare, DOD? Both parties keep kicking the can down the road.
It is easy to be ignorant and inconsiderate to the majority of people and make decisions for them that allow the rich to continue their quest for control of every market.
It is harder to be educated and considerate when ignorance is so abundant and convince them to make educated decisions.
The only morons are those who listen too the ones who never saw the hosing collapse. If you're going to listen to economists find the ones that called the housing collapse, find the ones that called the dot com bubble, find the ones who called the stock market crash. In other words listen to the free market economists like the Austrians.
Except the Austrians never called anything.
The dot.com bubble did nothing to your economy very slowly. It most certainly didn't cause a recession, if for no other reason than there was no recession.
The dot.com bubble was a great example of irrational behavior fueled by hype based on "over-everything."
Everything was grotesquely over-estimated, over-rated, over-hyped and over-valued, not to mention the marketing research was poorly conducted, and some of it was conducted fraudulently, with incredibly poor methodologies that appeared to be intended to skew the results.
The idea that the internet would replace Brick & Mortar was absurd on its face and very premature.
So, here we are, what, nearly 30 years later, it'll be 30 years in 2023, and we still have Brick & Mortar and will have for decades to come.
The idea that 100% of commerce would be conducted on the internet was a pie-in-the-sky wet-dream.
Your typical dot.com was 5 college guys (with a few dropouts) who had really swanky offices, and had spent a lot of money on themselves with their high salaries, and spent a lot of money, um, "branding" their web-sites, and that's it.
Where was their inventory? Their assets? Their cash?
They didn't have any, and no matter how much more was invested, they were never going to have any inventory or assets or cash, so venture capitalists pulled the plug and that was the end of that.
You had a housing bubble only because people lost jobs. If people hadn't lost their jobs, all of you would be none-the-wiser and you wouldn't know anything at all about a housing bubble.
And, stock markets do not cause recessions, nor can they, and they aren't even relevant.
A stock market isn't a requirement for a successful economy, and stocks are just one of a number of different ways that a publicly-traded corporation can raise cash Capital.
It is a very convenient way, but it is not essential for any economy and if stocks were banned and the stock market shut down, nothing bad would happen to your economy.
In fact, your economy might actually improve.
You hold stocks for a corporation and I hold a promissory note.
If the corporation was in trouble, whose claim is superior?
Mine.
I get paid before you see anything at all, and you're likely to see nothing.
But as someone who has been reading economists for the past thirty-five years, I've found their predictive ability to be non-existent. All you have to do is look at a hack such as Paul Krugman and his breathtaking record for being spectacularly wrong.
He predicted the Internet would have all the economic impact of the fax machine, whiffed on the dot com boom and bust, egged on the housing bubble and was almost completely blindsided by the financial sector meltdown of 2008 at a time when Ray Charles could have seen the handwriting on the wall, predicted fracking would do next to nothing to raise the US's profile as an oil producer, that Argentina was going to be the next great global economy, that the economy would tank the minute Trump took the oath of office and so on. And yet people still hang on his every word, despite his having all the accuracy of a chimp lobbing darts at a board.
And, lest you think I'm picking on Krugman, I get almost daily updates from the Federal Reserve. Their Atlanta office sends out almost daily bulletins predicting the final performance of the economy's quarter, yet that number always changes radically between Day 1 and Day 90. It's almost become a perverse hobby of mine to watch them slowly adjust the number upwards or downwards, never realizing that the entire point of predicting a quarter's performance is to do so at the beginning rather than the end.
In other words, economists are great at looking backward, but terrible at looking forward. In fact, this gets proved literally every single month. Economists predict the performance of the economy in advance every month, and then they have to compare it with the actual results once that same month is over. Very few are right, and none are right consistently.
But as someone who has been reading economists for the past thirty-five years, I've found their predictive ability to be non-existent. All you have to do is look at a hack such as Paul Krugman and his breathtaking record for being spectacularly wrong.
He predicted the Internet would have all the economic impact of the fax machine, whiffed on the dot com boom and bust, egged on the housing bubble, was completely blindsided by the financial sector meltdown of 2008, predicted fracking would do next to nothing to raise the US's profile as an oil producer, that Argentina was going to be the next great economy, that the economy would tank the minute Trump took the oath of office and so on. And yet people still hang on his every word, despite his having all the accuracy of a chimp lobbing darts at a board.
In other words, economists are great at looking backward, but terrible at looking forward. In fact, this gets proved literally every single month. Economists predict the performance of the economy in advance every month, and then they have to compare it with the actual results once that same month is over. Very few are right, and none are right consistently.
I agree. If economists were great at predicting where the economy and markets were headed, they wouldn't have to work as economists. However, you can rely on key pieces of data. In late March, the bond yield curve inverted. That is almost a 100% reliable indicator that a recession is coming soon.
Maybe. Then again, I think we're living in an Alice In Wonderland World where the old rules make no sense anymore. For example, in the past the bond yield curve also coincided with strong upticks in consumer debt. But consumer debt at the moment remains relatively low, certainly way lower than the banking meltdown of 2008. Some believe that the increased activity in bonds is a reaction to the ongoing idiotic trade war with the Chinese. If that is the case, what happens if an agreement is reached? Realizing of course that anything can happen nowadays, signs are pointing to an agreement some time this month.
And....just like that, there's a hiring surge for April and the unemployment rate drops to 3.6%, the lowest since 1969. And economists didn't see it coming.
I'm not being triumphalist when I type that. I'm just of the opinion that, especially in these weird economic times, economists aren't very good at predicting anything.
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