Economist sees an end to recession

[Marc]

See below... I have to admit even with my zero expereince at finance I highly doubt that USA is going to get out of the "recession" by the end of the year.

I am well into the depths of the "The Great Reckoning: Protecting Yourself in the Coming Depression" book and the authors predicted that there will be several statements calling an end to the current Depression which will end up being false. USA is heading for a Depression and its just the start.

Forecaster says that by the end of the year, U.S. will begin to bounce back.
Friday, March 13, 2009

By Rick Moriarty
Staff writer
As bad as the recession is, it will end sooner than many people may think, an economist told a business audience Thursday at the Oncenter.

Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics LLC, an Ohio economic research and forecasting firm, said the $800 billion stimulus plan, criticized by some as being too small, is actually "huge" and will begin boosting the economy during the second quarter of this year.

By way of comparison, he said the nation's 35-year construction of the interstate highway system, which began in the 1950s, cost $800 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars.

Read more of the article here...

Also watch these videos...


From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nJ7LM3iyNg


From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8flpctWV1NU


From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikCnEC1IIwk

[Marc]

Recovery in 2010: Bernanke

Another one stating it will all be over in '09

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke says the US recession could last most of the year and the biggest risk was that the political will needed to fix the fractured financial system could be lacking.

"This (economic) decline will begin to moderate and we'll begin to see a leveling off," Bernanke said when pressed during an interview on the CBS program "60 Minutes" about whether he sees the recession ending this year.

"We won't be back to full employment. But we will, I hope, see the end of these declines that have been so strong in a last couple of quarters," he said, according to a transcript of the interview.

Bernanke told Congress in January the Fed believes there is a reasonable prospect that the current recession will end in 2009 and that 2010 will be a year of recovery.

In the rare on-record interview, he largely stuck to that view, while suggesting recent developments had dimmed the outlook a bit.

"We'll see the recession coming to an end probably this year," Bernanke said. "We'll see recovery beginning next year."

Government efforts to combat the crisis have come under fire as stock markets have plunged and unemployment has soared even as authorities have stepped in repeatedly to prop up firms such as insurer American International Group.

The Fed chairman said his greatest worry is that political leaders and the public will withdraw support for efforts aimed at stabilizing the shattered banking system.

"The biggest risk is that, you know, we don't have the political will," he said. "We don't have the commitment to solve this problem, and that we let it just continue."

"In which case, we, we can't count on recovery."

Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/worl...-2010-Bernanke

[muppet]

From this morning's Daily reckoning

First, some treacherously good news: the Dow rose again yesterday...up 239 points. We're still withholding judgment, but it looks as though this might finally be the long-awaited rally. Stocks worldwide lost more than half their value without a single major rebound. We're overdue for one. Maybe this is it.

Oil rose too - to $47. It seems to be getting ready to slide back over the $50 mark.

And the dollar may have topped out. The euro rose yesterday to $1.28...while gold recovered $13 to close at $924.

As near as we can tell there is no good reason for stocks to rally. Unemployment is still rising and sales are still falling. Until those trends flatten out, there is no reason to think business will improve.

Au contraire, business conditions are worsening and companies are cutting dividends faster than any time since the Great Depression. How can stocks go up in price...when sales and earnings are falling? The only possibility would be an increase in P/E ratios. But who wants to pay more for corporate earnings now?

No one we know. Instead, investors are becoming more and more wary. Why? Because even the biggest, strongest companies in the world are reporting problems. The agencies knocked down GE's rating the other day. "What's it worth now?" asks a headline. But the same question could be posed to almost any company on the planet - conditions have changed; what's it worth now?

Last autumn, Warren Buffett commented on the solidity of his own company: "If Berkshire [Hathaway] isn't Triple A, I'm not sure which company would be."

But yesterday, Fitch took Berkshire down a notch...noting that the company had financial exposure in its insurance division that could be troublesome. Berkshire is no longer Triple A. And investors have to ask themselves: if you can't trust the best companies, run by the best CEOs, who can you trust?

We won't wait around for an answer, because there is none. The fact is the crisis has put a question mark behind all asset values.

Again, you'd expect these question marks to inspire a little serious thinking. If assets aren't worth what we thought they were worth...well, what are they worth? And what is happening in the economy that makes things so uncertain?

House prices show no sign of reaching a bottom; foreclosures are running 30% ahead of last year. And the press reports that there are 14 million empty houses in the United States. What happened to all the people who lived in them? Below...a partial answer...

Meanwhile, the free money is flowing. Taxpayers got rebate checks from the government last year - even if they hadn't paid any taxes. According to recent tallies, the feds have committed $12 trillion to freebies, bailouts, and boondoggles.

GM got a few billion. But the banks and Wall Street have been the biggest freeloaders so far. AIG has gotten four bailouts. Freddie Mac took a big bailout from the government too. But boo hoo...Freddie lost $50 billion last year, says the Washington Post, so it will need a little more help.

Freddie Mac "to tap $30.8 billion in aid as losses deepen," says the Bloomberg report.

When will the losses stop? Who knows? But chances are...not any time soon. You're going to have to protect yourself - and your assets - from these bailouts.