From the category archives:

recession

With the US dollar increasingly perceived to be walking on shakier ground, and no significant signs in sight that the US will be able to pay off its debts without radical quantitative easing (i.e., effective devaluation of the dollar); continued unemployment levels near 10% and no short-term fix in the ongoing housing slump (more foreclosures [...]

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The rally has been over for a good two months, and the markets have been stuck in a trading range since the New Year.  Recent concerns over the potential of sovereign debt crises, however, show that we’re not out of the woods yet.
Just consider some of the following areas for potential setbacks in the markets: [...]

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The Obama administration sits between an economic rock and a political hard place.  Others might call it a contradiction.  Obama needs to cut spending, but he’s doing this at the same time that more spending is being introduced (on job creation, more troops in Afghanistan).  Slight cuts in some areas are supposed to offset increased [...]

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State of the (Economic) Union 2010: is political news now a leading indicator of stock markets?
I can’t remember where I read it recently, perhaps even in the End of Influence, but the consensus among some who know more about it than I do is that stock markets, and most notably the U.S. stock market in [...]

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Highest ever one-month inflation rise in the UK for December, fiscal imbalances in Greece, weakened macro-economics in Germany, a Canadian housing market bubble, higher than 50% gains in the commodity currencies since last March (2009), and the return of hubris and risk-taking in the U.S. investment banks… what do these all have in common?
Is it [...]

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Increasingly, analysts seem to agree that the first half (and the first quarter, especially) of stock markets in 2010 will look robust and promising, but stock markets in the second half of the year leave much to be desired.
The possibility of a double-dip recession still remains for some, while others mitigate this prediction about the [...]

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I’m an extremely cautious bull on the current markets.  Cautious, because, if a few criteria are met, the mini bull market (or bear market rally, if you prefer) we’ve seen since March 2009 could easily tip over and provide the catalyst for the hypothetical “double-dip recession.”
Commentators have recently been pointing out the fact that the [...]

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