Well This Can't Be Good

[Rareboy]

So this morning, The TSX is down 300 points. Over the last month I've lost about 30K on the value of investments. Another couple of sessions like this and it will equal the 2008/09 crash.

I think that the West is hurtling back into Recession/Depression...it just hasn't been announced to the general public yet.....probably everyone trying to squeeze one more Christmas buying season out of this mess before the bad news hits again......

[East]

I think it will hit again sometime in early 2015...

My investor friend (does it for a living) explained it to me in great detail back in October...connected to the unprecedented printing of too much money

[Lexington]

Five of my friends were laid off this past week. I was told both my jobs are now on the chopping block, and my partner had his hours reduced. Anecdotal, but I think the slide is real.

Lex

[Aike]

It wouldn't be a surprise considering that corporate profits in the United States have been tending downwards ever since the "recovery" (didn't happen). It's pretty much the same story everywhere, or at least in so called developed countries. As profits drive investments (no sense in investing if it doesn't generate a profitable rate of return), growth (and alongside it employment and demand) will not recover if profitability remains in low gear.

As East's friend said, the Fed's policy so far has been "quantitative easing" or, in other words, pumping money into the economy like there's no tomorrow in an attempt to stimulate the economy. Unfortunately, this doesn't work. All that money has been flowing to the financial sector and generating "artificial growth" as it were. The result: a massive bubble in financial assets.

Early 2015 seems like a good guess. Michael Roberts (my economist of choice) has been predicting another slump in 2014-2015 for a few years now. I tend to trust his predictions because he was one of those few economists who predicted the 07/08 crash a few years before it happened.

[JackTX]

I was just hearing the other day that the U.S. jobs numbers were the best in a long time.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/05/news/eco...bs-report/

Of course that could be temporary or not indicative of other things (like Canada :p).

[Aike]

I was just hearing the other day that the U.S. jobs numbers were the best in a long time.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/05/news/eco...bs-report/

Of course that could be temporary or not indicative of other things (like Canada :p).

I would advice not to rely on the unemployment rates covered in the news. Go to Economic Policy Institute if you want to get the latest data on unemployment.

First, the unemployment rates you mostly hear about only cover people who are out of employment but actively seeking work. In other words, if you're unemployed but not actively looking for a job (for whatever reason), you don't count. EPI has pretty nice graphs about these "missing workers". As you can see, their number has exploded since the 07 recession (or should we call it a depression now?) and not really come down much. The "official" unemployment rates usually reported in the news give too rosy a picture of the situation.

Second, unemployment rates do not touch the issue of what kind of jobs have been generated since the 07 recession. For that you'd need to look at underemployment rates, which cover people who have jobs but don't get enough hours to pay their living costs. The number of people who work part-time involuntarily exploded in 2008. These are people who are employed but not making enough money so it's not helping them. Moreover, wages remain in low gear.

In short, there's been no real recovery for working people.

[East]

Very true about the employment figures...so many of them have long ago fallen off the radar.....

The illegal immigration thing has hurt a lot here as the jobs that were once available are no longer available.

For instance...My best friend had a once million dollar tree service company. He paid all of the taxes and unemployment and insurance, ect....and employed 10 people...all legally....he ended up with a modest living

Eventually he was undercut and pushed out of business by illegals who underbid everything..do not pay any of the fees/taxes/insurance/unemployment...and once they drive everyone who does it legally out of business they raise their rates....they compete unfairly....

No one ever tells that part of the story...and it has happened in one industry after another....

[Lexington]

I was just hearing the other day that the U.S. jobs numbers were the best in a long time.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/05/news/eco...bs-report/

Of course that could be temporary or not indicative of other things (like Canada :p).

The government has shuffled around their methods for determining the unemployment rate several times over the past few decades. Every time they have, the unemployment rate has fallen. Curious that.

Best guess at true unemployment rate - as in "these people want to work but can't find anything" - hovered around 23% in 2012. And that still excludes those who are under-employed - forced into lower-paying jobs by necessity. It wouldn't surprise me if the un/under-employment rate in the US was approaching 50% now.

Lex

[Hardheaded1]

My spidey sense says the housing bubble burst was artificially corrected and the continuing jacked up rents and mortgages are unsustainable with the exodus of manufacturing jobs to low-wage countries. The real devaluation, which inherently will have ripple effects across the entire economy, has been delayed and will yet hit in the U.S. I don't know enough about foreign economies to opine there. It's kinda like the Brit banks colluding to falsify the exchange rates -- who knows what the real game is?

We've basically left our working class with unaffordable housing, medical costs, and education. That is unsustainable and hasn't been addressed by Congress or the executive branch.

The wagon is headed back into the ditch, and let's be clear -- we were in a depression after the last collapse, not a recession. The government trembled and they convinced the media to not even use the word depression to avoid a broader panic and collapse. I just wish I had the ability to liquidate my 401k from work before it slides into the shitter.

Stay tuned. It's going to be bumpy night. But remember, we were once happy with not nearly so much. I plan on being happy without it again if it comes to that. It's a choice.

[Bowyn Aerrow]

Deflation, and currency reset are in the works. Much like the price of everything after the Great Depression was hella lower than before.

We missed out on that. Instead rapid inflation has been taking place. The cans have gottn smaller but the price hasn't to make the illusion that food prices have remained the same.

Gasoline has dropped soley because of lack of demand. Folk are not driving all that much. They are using all the means in their power to get people to spend money that they don't have.

Its not going to end well.

Turning to the stock market as a measure of economic health is silly. Mainstreet and the workers are the measure of healthy economy.

2015 may see the Second Great Depression.