(Firstly can someone PLEASE give me the correct spelling of that so i can correct the title)

The point of the thread is twofold

1) to see if people really think the US will fall into a ression

but secondly to ask now that China and India are so big will it really matter to anyone OTHER than the US if they do

Do you see in the upper left hand cornor of the reply box where the little check is located and under it is ABC. Try using that to check your spelling for it works great for me.:cool:

Recession

Do you see in the upper left hand CORNOR of the reply box where the little check is located and under it is ABC. Try using that to check your spelling for it works great for me.:cool:


Sure it does! :) Irony at its best!

Sure it does! :) Irony at its best!

I did that jus ta get your attention, I know how to spell corner. ;)

if you people dont get on topic i will delete your posts

(Firstly can someone PLEASE give me the correct spelling of that so i can correct the title)

The point of the thread is twofold

1) to see if people really think the US will fall into a ression

but secondly to ask now that China and India are so big will it really matter to anyone OTHER than the US if they do

The spelling is correct.

Any recession from the the U.S. will rebound around the world, the globalization of the economy make it impossible for a major recession in any first world country not to affect the rest of the world, its like a cold, everybody gets it

Don't you guys read the newspapers?

US economy heading for a recession - Standard Chartered (http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/newstex/AFX-0013-22253774.htm)

Recession at US’ doorstep (http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/1/17/business/20035604&sec=business)

UK Stock markets tumble on US recession fears (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/01/16/bcnstocks116.xml)

Oil falls towards 90 usd on US recession fears, hopes OPEC will up production (http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/newstex/AFX-0013-22293349.htm)

Japanese Stocks Fall for Fourth Day on U.S. Recession Concerns (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=aMPQYwYUxKD4&refer=japan)

Fears of a U.S. Recession Hit European and Asian Markets (http://www.economicnews.ca/login.php?page=reportsDetails&newsid=41847&prevview=&view=details&country=&plimit=0&category=All%20Economic%20Reports)

How many of you have seen stores closing down? Probably mostly in small town malls?

India and China will simply cool down but I doubt a recession will happen. The rest of the world will follow the US into the doldrums.

Actually the ecconomic comments here in Australia are that a US recession may actually help the australian ecconmy because we are so dependent on china which has a 12% growth rate currently. if the US goes bust china may drop to an 8% growth rate (acording to the econimest on ABC radio adelaide) which wouldnt slow Australian exports but which might make it more sustainable.

So although it used to be the case that if the US sneased the rest of the world caught a cold it may no longer be the case.

Actually the ecconomic comments here in Australia are that a US recession may actually help the australian ecconmy because we are so dependent on china which has a 12% growth rate currently. if the US goes bust china may drop to an 8% growth rate (acording to the econimest on ABC radio adelaide) which wouldnt slow Australian exports but which might make it more sustainable.

So although it used to be the case that if the US sneased the rest of the world caught a cold it may no longer be the case.

Yeah, India is expecting a slight slowing down of the economy too, which may be good considering we are not equipped to deal with the speed at which we are growing now.

Give us time to build on infrastructure for which we are already using mostly Chinese products. Also make American scrap metal and scrap paper cheaper which will be a tremendous boon, since we import it from the US and convert it to higher value commodity products that Americans (and other Western countries) buy.

Actually the ecconomic comments here in Australia are that a US recession may actually help the australian ecconmy because we are so dependent on china which has a 12% growth rate currently.
Australia's national debt is very high...about 90% of GDP, which wouldnt even qualify for membership in the EU.

This is a huge drag on the economy, which might be pushed over the edge by a worldwide slow down.

Be VERY intrested to see your figures on that. Also are you refering to private debt or goverment debt and if goverment debt at which level of goverment? Because "Surposedly" the federal goverment has no debt (although i would belive peter costello about as far as i could throw him)

Be VERY intrested to see your figures on that.
Just look up 'Economy of Australia' on Wikipedia.

Divide the public debt at 585 billion by the GDP at 645 billion and viola!

To qualify for membership in the EU a nation cannot have more than 60% debt to GDP.

would it surprise you to learn that wikipedia isnt concidered to be a relable sorce at uni?
I only ever use it for infomation on games and TV programs

Try finding statistics from the ABS, the australian parlimentry libary or the UN or even the CIA fact book but not Wikipedia.

for your infomation this is the australian federal budget for 2007
http://www.ato.gov.au/budget/2007-08/bp1/html/bp1_bst9-01.htm

Try finding statistics from the ABS, the australian parlimentry libary or the UN or even the CIA fact book but not Wikipedia.I think Wiki is fairly accurate on major figures. There was an article in Australia's News Weekly stating that the national debt was up to 400 billion...and that was three years ago.

http://www.newsweekly.com.au/articles/2005jan08_e.html

If Aus has suddenly reduced the debt to zero in just a year or so it must have involved the privatization of public industries perhaps.

well that artical refered to private debt not goverment and it also never referenced its sorce.

Im sorry but wikipedia and news articals with no sorces are not nessarly accurate. I would rather you gave an athotive sorce. Im not saying your wrong but the sorces you give are quite poor for the area's your using them

well that artical refered to private debt not goverment and it also never referenced its sorce.

No it makes a distinction between 'national debt' and 'foreign debt':

"Australian national debt has sky-rocketed to $400 billion during the Howard administration, but no one dares complain because the alternative - paying down the debt or stopping the borrowing - is an awfully unattractive option with fearful consequences for business and jobs."

I looked it up on the CIA factbook but their figures are two years old.

Well, I think India and China can take the slack, If the US pulls out, So will Europe, some countries dependent directly on the US might falter.

the figures in that artical are at least THREE years old so i would go with the CIA fact book if i was you

Well, I think India and China can take the slack, If the US pulls out, So will Europe, some countries dependent directly on the US might falter.

Canada may suffer, they have too much business south of the border.

There will be no recession. W won't allow it. Neither will Chuck Norris:

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=Chuck+Norris&word2=recession

:D

The liberal media wants a recession. They are dying for one. ANYTHING to make W look bad. It won't work. :D

There will be no recession. W won't allow it. Neither will Chuck Norris:

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=Chuck+Norris&word2=recession

:D

The liberal media wants a recession. They are dying for one. ANYTHING to make W look bad. It won't work. :D

i know chuck norris is cool as shit but the f does he have to do with the economy

i know chuck norris is cool as shit but the f does he have to do with the economy

It was humor, dude. Humor. Got it?

NEW YORK (AP) -- With Wall Street falling precipitously almost by the day, investors are asking what it will take to revive it. Market experts are increasingly coming to the same answer: Time.

There is no piece of economic data, no corporate earnings report, no move by the Federal Reserve and no government tax plan that will be able to soothe the market's anxiety in the next couple weeks over the weakening economy.

That's not to say the stock market will keep plunging the way it has been. To be sure, bargain hunters will likely see Wall Street's recent slides as buying opportunities, particularly if encouraging news comes along like a hefty interest rate cut or better-than-expected profits at the nation's big-name companies.

Upbeat financial results in the coming week from some of the large, multinational companies that make up the Dow Jones industrials -- Microsoft Corp., AT&T Inc., Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Caterpillar Inc. and Honeywell International Inc. -- could lead to some rallies. But no one should be surprised if the gains evaporate as soon as they developed.

Investors simply have too many questions to buy into stocks with confidence -- questions that are not going to be answered until all fourth-quarter results are in, and until Wall Street has a better sense of how the still-young first quarter is going.

"We've baked in a lot of bad news. But we don't know the magnitude of the bad news yet. We don't know if we've overdone it," said Arthur Hogan, chief market analyst at Jefferies & Co. "I don't think there's any combination of things next week that will necessarily turn things around."

The Dow sank 4.02 percent last week, the Standard & Poor's 500 index dropped 5.41 percent, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 4.10 percent.

Last week brought exactly what investors feared: a wretched manufacturing reading from the Philadelphia Fed, dismal home construction data from the Commerce Department, a worse-than-expected profit at Intel Corp. and historic losses at Citigroup Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co.

Even the more profitable banks, such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co., said they were bracing for more problems in a wide swath of consumer credit, from home equity loans to auto loans and credit cards.

This week will bring earnings from more banks, notably Bank of America Corp. and Wachovia Corp. Companies outside the financial sector with a strong global presence might ease some of the anxiety about America's corporate muscle, but it is unlikely they will cure it.

"There is an earnings recession," said Hugh Johnson, chief investment officer of Johnson Illington Advisors, noting that S&P 500 operating earnings growth was lower in the third quarter of 2007 than in second quarter, and is sure to be lower in the fourth quarter of 2007 than in the third.

"The real key question is not whether there's going to be an economic recession. It's not when the economic recession is going to end," Johnson said. "It's when is the earnings recession going to end?"

Martin Luther King Day on Monday is a market holiday and, after that, the government will release only a few economic reports ahead of the Fed's Jan. 29-30 meeting on interest rates. Wall Street will probe those that do come out more closely than usual for clues about how deflated the economy is and how that might affect business.

The Labor Department's weekly jobless claims data will also be watched, as will the National Association of Realtors' report on December sales of existing homes. Economists expect existing home sales to slip again after inching up in November.

With market pessimism at heights not seen in years, it is certainly possible the market is near its bottom. But there are few investors eager to bet on when stocks will resume their climb, and how long it will be before new records are reached again.

"Maybe by the end of the first quarter, things will line up for the market to find to some stability," said Steven Goldman, chief market strategist at Weeden & Co.

The Dow is now 14.6 percent below its Oct. 9 record close of 14,164.53, and is less than 100 points away from slipping beneath the 12,000 mark, which it first surpassed in October 2006.

"The real key question is not whether there's going to be an economic recession. It's not when the economic recession is going to end," Johnson said. "It's when is the earnings recession going to end?"


Post-war history says the recession will last 12-15 months.

I think it could be shortened with the correct action by the Fed, but they seem to be going the other way with liquidity.

In macroeconomics, a recession is a decline in a country's gross domestic product (GDP), or negative real economic growth, for two or more successive quarters of a year. However, in the United States the official designation of recessions is done by the business-cycle dating committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research.That Bureau defines a recession more ambiguously as "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months." (wikipedia)

Just after the great depression, in 1930, the GDP lost 9%. What are we going to call if the GDP drops 10% by 2010 from today?

The liberal media wants a recession. They are dying for one. ANYTHING to make W look bad. It won't work.

I'm pretty sure all Mr. Dubya has to do to look bad is step in front of a camera and open his mouth. :D

Is This The Big One?

By Mike Whitney

On Monday, fears of a US recession spilled over into Asian markets sending stocks tumbling. Indexes were hammered across the board in what turned out to be the worst day of trading since 2001.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19126.htm

===

A Stimulus to What?

Delusions Prevail in Washington

By Paul Craig Roberts

US job growth in the 21st century has been confined to low-pay domestic services. During 2007, waitresses and bartenders, health care and social assistance, and wholesale and retail trade, transportation and utilities accounted for 91% of new private sector jobs.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19125.htm

Canada may suffer, they have too much business south of the border.

Can't wait till the recession. That when all the assholes whom really have no money - can't spend anymore.

Then I can come and buy all the shit they bought and can't pay for - for like a 1/5th what they paid for it. They might even kiss my ass while I do it.

If it's a collectable or something that can increase in value over time, I can turn around a sell it to their asses for more than they originally paid for it.

Love to see me a recession...just hoping it's not a depression....reminds me I gotta buy some more bullets...

Average per household debt in the U.S., not counting mortgage debt, is about $14500 (bankrate.com)

Bush tax cut plan $800

(actually it will buy the groceries for a month)

Do the math...too little, too late, may be recession will not turn to another great depression.

I dont understand how to prevent a recession caused by rampant debt, the government thinks they can just give out more money that they already dont have to begin with. Its mind blowing to me.

damn, just checked - all markets are down basically because of U.S woes...with today a U.S holiday and nervous investors reading doom and gloom(reality actually - finally).

Black Tuesday - Tomorrow.

damn, just checked - all markets are down basically because of U.S woes...with today a U.S holiday and nervous investors reading doom and gloom(reality actually - finally).

Black Tuesday - Tomorrow.

Man, I hope not. :bawl:

Not good! :(

It will be poor people who suffer as usual, rich people will only exploit the situation further.

Not good! :(

It will be poor people who suffer as usual, rich people will only exploit the situation further.

But but!!!! I'm a poor people!!!! :bawl: :bawl:

I dont understand how to prevent a recession caused by rampant debt, the government thinks they can just give out more money that they already dont have to begin with. Its mind blowing to me.

Put a major tariff on imported goods effective immidiately. Tell the world that it is only for 6 months (otherwise everyone will do the same). Tell the U.S. businesses to start producing stuff domestically (except crap - let the Chinese do that). Within 3 months, things will be different.

And use that Tariff money to extend unemployment or even pay tax credit to the businesses for new production.

Also charge all outsourced services as labor and training tax. Pay the businesses who in-source so that the cost is same between the two.

Bottom Line: Jobs...Jobs...Jobs

Again, Japanese, Germans and Korean put lots of barriers to our export of basic materials and services. Why can not we do the same?

All we need is 20% production rise, then we will have time to adjust to the new technologies in the pipeline. The world will understand and even support it, because what is good for U.S. is good for everyone.

Again, Japanese, Germans and Korean put lots of barriers to our export of basic materials and services. Why can not we do the same?


we used to...sigh

Bottom Line: Jobs...Jobs...Jobs

Indian stocks...

http://epaper.hindustantimes.com/Web/Photographs/2008/01/22/001/22_01_2008_001_022_014.jpg

Not good! :(

It will be poor people who suffer as usual, rich people will only exploit the situation further.

How? The poor don't own millions in stocks that may dive. They don't own millions in real estate that may be worth 30% less than it was a year ago.
The poor will stay poor. The rich will become less rich. Temporarily. Then they will buy up lots of the cheap stuff and make more millions on it as it appreciates.

How? The poor don't own millions in stocks that may dive. They don't own millions in real estate that may be worth 30% less than it was a year ago.
The poor will stay poor. The rich will become less rich. Temporarily. Then they will buy up lots of the cheap stuff and make more millions on it as it appreciates.

The poor will end up even more poor, to save money a help their dwindling profits companies will lay off the lowest tier of employees so that the highest paid can still rake in those big paychecks.

Investors in Asia have been in a state of denial about a possible recession in the United States, said Adrian Mowat, JPMorgan’s chief strategist in Asia. But now, he said, “there’s no debate about it.” The only question, he added is “how long and deep” a recession might be. [CNN]

The liberal media wants a recession. They are dying for one. ANYTHING to make W look bad. It won't work. :D

Stop with this bullshit that the media is liberal controlled. You have no proof that it is. As far as I see it, it is either neutral or leaning towards the right-wing.

By the way, you don't need to be a liberal to know that Bush is not a good president. His approval ratings are down the drain. his approval ratings are 32% approve and 66% dissapporve (2% have no opinion).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/custom/2006/02/02/CU2006020201345.html

His approval ratings are down the drain. his approval ratings are 32% approve and 66% dissapporve
Yes but he answers only to God...remember?

Cheney's gone on record as saying they dont care what the majority thinks...they answer to a higher moral authority.

This is how they can bankrupt the country slaughtering over 500,000 people in the middle east...and still feel pretty good about it.

Yes but he answers only to God...remember?

Cheney's gone on record as saying they dont care what the majority thinks...they answer to a higher moral authority.

This is how they can bankrupt the country slaughtering over 500,000 people in the middle east...and still feel pretty good about it.

That's why liberals usually make better presidents. Seperation from church and state!

but secondly to ask now that China and India are so big will it really matter to anyone OTHER than the US if they doaccording to the reports I saw today - apparently yes it will have an impact. How much I wonder?

yea i saw that, the stock market is taking a beating. $55 millon wiped out this morning alone. Not sure how much that actually matters though, the stock market doesnt always reflect reality. As i said i would LOVE to have spare cash right now to buy some of those stocks, they are so undervalued.

ok i slightly underestimated that

it was $100 BILLION not million
its lost $240 billion this year

Hopefully the problem will stay confined to the stock market and not flow

Asguard: "Hopefully the problem will stay confined to the stock market and not flow"

Wishful thinking. This is going to hurt all of us. But poor Yanks- we're going to have a harder fall.

oh i dont care what happens to you:p

im kidding, but i WAS talking about the australian ecconomy because people are panic selling now. we still export most of our stuff to asia and whats more with the flooding the farmers will be looking to hire again so cant see the unemployment rate going up

It's time for some Steely (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1ZV4Mx7tw8) stoicism.

When Black Friday comes- I'll stand down by the door
And catch all the grey men as they dive from the fourteenth floor
When Black Friday comes, I'll collect everything I'm owed
And before my friends find out I'll be on the road

When Black Friday falls you know it's got to be
Don't let it fall on me

When Black Friday comes- I'll fly down to Muswellbrook
Gonna strike all the big red words from my little black book
Gonna do just what I please, gonna wear no socks and shoes
With nothing to do but feed all the Kangaroos

When Black Friday comes I'll be on that hill
You know I will

When Black Friday comes- I'm gonna dig myself a hole
Gonna lay down in it till I satisfy my soul
Gonna let the world pass by me, the Archbishop gonna sanctify me
And if he don't come across I' m gonna let it roll

When Black Friday comes, I'm gonna stake my claim
I guess I'll change my name

what is black friday?

Here it refers to a bushfire that was even worse than ash Wed

Stop with this bullshit that the media is liberal controlled. You have no proof that it is. As far as I see it, it is either neutral or leaning towards the right-wing.

By the way, you don't need to be a liberal to know that Bush is not a good president. His approval ratings are down the drain. his approval ratings are 32% approve and 66% dissapporve (2% have no opinion).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/custom/2006/02/02/CU2006020201345.html

she only believes media that is biased towrds the right wing view point

Asguard: "what is black friday?"

Hopefully not 25-01-08. It could be that, or...(source: Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday))

Black Friday (1869) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_%281869%29), the Fisk-Gould Scandal (24 Sep), a financial crisis in the United States
Black Friday (1910) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_%281910%29), a campaign outside the British House of Commons (18 Nov) of the Women's Social and Political Union the Conciliation Bill failed
Black Friday (1919) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_%281910%29), the Battle of George Square (31 Jan), a riot stemming from industrial unrest in Glasgow, Scotland
Black Friday (1921) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_%281910%29), the announcement of British transport union leaders (15 Apr) not to call for strike action against wage reductions for miners
Black Friday (1939) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_%281939%29), a day of devastating fires in Australia (13 Jan)
Black Friday (1944) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_%281944%29), a disastrous attack by the Canadian Black Watch (13 Oct) near Woensdrecht during the Battle of the Scheldt
Black Friday (1945) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_%281945%29), an air battle over Sunnfjord (9 Feb), the largest over Norway
Hollywood Black Friday (5 Oct 1945) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Black_Friday), a riot at the Warner Bros. studios stemming from a Confederation of Studio Unions (CSU) strike leading to the eventual breakup of the CSU
Black Friday (1978) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_%281978%29), a massacre of protesters in Iran (8 Sep)
Black Friday (1982) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_%281982%29), the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands, sparking the Falklands War
Black Friday (Maldives) (2004) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_%28Maldives%29), a crackdown in Maldives, Malé (13 Aug) on peaceful protesters


My guess is that Steely Dan was either referring to 1869, or to a generically Bad Day.

The Fed is trying to plug the leaks with a cut in interest rates and massive cash injections to some banks - but the rest of the world doesn't look too optimistic. I don't believe (and haven't for some years) that the U.S. economy is sustainable. I'm no economist, but it seems reasonable to me that we're headed for a serious reckoning - at the very least a contraction/correction/whatever you want to call it that will drop the DJ to 7000 and vaporize the artificial wealth that has buoyed us along since 1990. At worst? Doesn't really bear thinking about.

DOW is already down 450 points (Foxnews) while Feds cut interest rate 0.75%. Really bad news. I wonder if there is some underlying global issues that is causing this like $4 Trillion dollars worth?

May be a few countries are printing money to pay for the oil?

DOW is already down 450 points (Foxnews) while Feds cut interest rate 0.75%. Really bad news. I wonder if there is some underlying global issues that is causing this like $4 Trillion dollars worth?

May be a few countries are printing money to pay for the oil?

Someone just bailed out the DOW. only -94 as I post this.

Someone is throwing around their weight.

Reminds me of when Bill Gates single handidly corrected the 97' correction.

ok i slightly underestimated that

it was $100 BILLION not million
its lost $240 billion this year

Hopefully the problem will stay confined to the stock market and not flow

The stock market is the all-seeing-eye at the the top of the pyramid scheme economic system of the so-called "free-market". If it goes down the next level must bear it's weight until it is rebuilt to hold it's own structure.

The next level is supposidly banks, considering how many of them are invested in the market and how much money they have loaned out and invested in U.S assets, I figure they are at least as weak as the market.

The Government falls somewhere after banks in most "free" countries. Considering the U.S prints money like it's going out of style, well I don't expect it to be able to help out the american people much...unless it can pull billions out of it's all...oh wait is that the presses I hear firing up?

The people. Well I don't know what they are like in your neck of the woods, but here they would already rather run over a homeless person than have to wait for a redlight. I'm told constantly by Americans, gee people are so nice here in Toronto and I'm like "WTF are you from??" Have you seen what your neighbour has left for you in the public toilet? Not even a courtesy flush these days...

well world stocks are going down...oh boy MLK day saved US some bit there since stock markets were closed than...

Not really

The US Federal Reserve has cut interest rates to 3.5%, a shock three-quarters of a percentage point reduction.

Aimed at staving off a US recession, the move failed to calm investors, with shares continuing to fall sharply as Wall Street opened for Tuesday trading.

The Fed, the US central bank, said latest figures indicated a deepening of the country's housing market slump and increased unemployment levels.

One analyst said the Fed was "obviously panicked" by the threat of recession.

"Unfortunately they have no power to reverse what in my opinion is the worst post-war recession," said Michael Metz, chief investment strategist at Oppenheimer in New York.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7202645.stm

It is what it is

We're not "panicked" about anything. These trends come every 7 years. No one is freaked out except fools. The rest of us will ride it out like we always do.

W doesn't care about his ratings. He never has. He never will. He's not working to impress anyone. He answers to God.

Strange , I thought he answered to the american people ....well , at least he stopped drinking like he did , when he was younger ( I hope you are not confusing his spirit (alcohol) with his spirit (spirituality)) ....just joking .........

Anyway , a few hints I have learned through time :
When shares drop a lot - don´t panic and sell - keep the shares, they will go up again .....sometimes it can take some time ......
When shares drop a lot - consider buy some of the better ones at a bargain ...there might just be a few bucks in it
for you, when they rebound .....:m:;)

It does look like the banks are shitscared of a recession...wonder why. Maybe BillyT has this 100% down, going to have to re-read them posts. Sovereign funds was it Billy?

MOD HAT: sandy i dont care how good you think bush is, this is to debate the ECCONERMIE not how much you love Bush. Take it to politics

Its interesting, as i understand it a loss of share price doesnt have anything to do with buiness capital. At the moment at least i cant see any mass sackings because of this in Australia at least. With the end of the drought there will be more demand on labour plus our housing sector is going up because there isnt enough property to go around.

Out of intrest what is happerning to comodity prices like iron, copper ect?
got a feeling that with all the Chiness infusitucture projects there wont be to large a fall in this which will mean that there is still money going into the Australian ecconamy. Not worried yet although i am not looking at using my super of corse:p

"It's clearly indiscriminate panic," said Tim Condon, chief Asia economist for ING Financial Markets in Singapore.

Japan's Nikkei 225 index plunged 5.7%, following a 3.9% decline a day earlier -- the worst two-day fall in 17 years, according to Moody's Economy.com. Trading in India was halted after markets opened nearly 10% lower, finishing down 4.6% on top of a loss of 7.4% on Monday. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index slid 8.7% today, after falling more than 5% the previous day.

Analysts said the dramatic retreat in Hong Kong and some other Asian markets underscored the realization by foreign investors that the fast-growing region wouldn't be shielded from a U.S. slowdown. American and European funds had poured huge sums into developing markets, with some taking comfort in the view that Asia had become less dependent on the U.S. economy and more closely linked to the two dynamo developing economies, China and India. Now, some of those foreign funds are being repatriated.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-asianmarkets23jan23,0,5966237.story?coll=la-home-center
Looks like we have an answer to part of the OP at least. If the US goes into recession, the world goes with it. Worldwide markets plunged before US markets! The 3/4 point drop in interest rates today seems to have settled things down in the US for now. But there are still other shoes that can drop.

Normally after Christmas, manufaturers order for the new inventory. Now, the whole issue is in a confused state. Wait till first week of Frebrusry and see if manufacturers are ready to replace their inventory. Then again, since Walmart gets 70% of products overseas, US manufactuerers may not have any major expansion to bring jobs.

We are definitely in a funk....

Patching the dam with a band-aid

http://www.americanprogress.org/cartoons/2008/01/012208_stimulus.html/repository/image/item835721479

From Time

Despite Asia's torrid growth, consumers in China and India accounted for only $1.6 billion of the world's spending last year, a tiny fraction of the $9.5 trillion spent by Americans, according to Stephen Roach, head of Morgan Stanley's business in Asia. It's impossible to pull U.S. spending back without sending ripples through the rest of the world.

That's a pretty big difference,
Michael

What was the amount of credit spent in the three countries?

From Time
Despite Asia's torrid growth, consumers in China and India accounted for only $1.6 billion of the world's spending last year, a tiny fraction of the $9.5 trillion spent by Americans, according to Stephen Roach, head of Morgan Stanley's business in Asia. It's impossible to pull U.S. spending back without sending ripples through the rest of the world.

That's a pretty big difference,
Michael

That does not sound right. As per Wall Street Journal, the GDP of China is $3.249 Trillion and India $1.224 Trillion. Since GDP formula is based on spending (Consumer + Government), and assuming consumer spending is 70% of the total - that is still about $3 Trillion.

That was from this article: Can the World Stop the Slide? (http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1706449,00.html?xid=site-cnn-partner)

What was the amount of credit spent in the three countries?
I would think in China and India it would be much much lower. I think in the USA people bought a lot betting their homes would continue to go up and up and up in value....

OK let us see...

From TIME

"With many of the world's economic movers, shakers and interpreters gathering in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos just as markets from Mumbai to Madrid were freaking out, there was no shortage of explanations as to why. The short answer: U.S. consumers, who have been increasing their spending without pause since all the way back in 1991, are tapped out. They Scrooged their way through the holidays — retail sales were the weakest in five years — and employers started to get nervous. They've dialed down their hiring, sending unemployment inching up 0.3% in December. It might not sound like much, but that's 474,000 fewer people on the payrolls than the previous month — enough for the financial system that enabled this spending binge to take notice and begin the painful return to sobriety."

From Yahoo news that Sandy provided a link elsewhere:

"But those seeking good news found some in a Labor Department report that said the number of people seeking unemployment benefits last week fell for a fourth straight week. Applications for benefits dropped 1,000 to 301,000, pushing claims down to the lowest level in four months."

From International Herald Tribune (http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/17/business/yuan.php)

" (China's) Household consumption, however, is the lowest of any major economy. It fell to 36.4 percent of gross domestic product in 2006 from 37.7 percent in 2005, when the comparable figures for the United States and India were 70 percent and 61 percent, respectively. The downtrend is not new: in 1990 China's ratio was 49 percent."

This number does not jibe with Time's number

A wild ride
Jan 24th 2008
From The Economist print edition

There will be odd rallies, but fear will continue to stalk the financial markets


JAMES CARVILLE, Bill Clinton's political adviser, once said he wanted to be reincarnated as the bond market so that he could “intimidate everybody”. This week the stockmarkets showed they could make pretty good use of the knuckle-duster, too.

It did not even take a fall on Wall Street to spook the Federal Reserve into slashing interest rates by three-quarters of a point on January 22nd; the American markets were closed for a public holiday the day before. The Fed reacted instead to a slump in global markets and the prospect, indicated by the futures market, that the Dow Jones Industrial Average would drop by more than 500 points at the opening. Small wonder that traders are now talking about the “Bernanke put”─the idea that, like his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, the Fed chairman will ride to the rescue whenever markets falter.

On January 23rd the markets chalked up another success when, after driving down the share prices of the two largest bond insurers to the point where they threatened to buckle, the prospect of a rescue surfaced. It came just in the nick of time. Half way through January 23rd, many global stockmarkets, including America's NASDAQ, were at least 20% below their peaks, a decline that put them in bear-market territory (see chart). World stockmarkets, as measured by the MSCI, were almost there. Despite its recovery on January 23rd the S&P 500 was still down 14.5% from its peak in October.

The markets have pulled out of such swallow dives before, notably in 1998 when rate cuts revived sentiment in the wake of the Asian crisis and the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management, an American hedge fund. Whether the latest recovery marks a turning point, or merely a pit stop on the way to a bear market, depends on whether the Fed has moved sharply and deeply enough to save America from recession. It also depends on how the rest of the world reacts to America's woes .

There are plenty of reasons for pessimism. The credit market, which has been a better gauge of the credit crisis than shares, is still sickly. As of January 23rd, the cost of insuring against default by European speculative bonds had risen by almost one-and-a-half percentage points over the previous month

The credit crunch continues to sap the strength of the financial system, which may curb banks' ability to lend. By flooding the money markets with liquidity near the end of last year, central banks helped unjam the troubled interbank market. But a year after subprime-mortgage woes started to emerge, house prices are still falling and investment banks are owning up to ever larger write-offs on mortgage-related investments.

If the problems are still largely focused on the subprime-mortgage market, they are not safely quarantined in the United States. Before the year started, investors had taken comfort from the concept of decoupling—that the rest of the world, and particularly Asia, could keep growing regardless . Generally, much of the world, particularly emerging Asia, is less exposed to America than it was. However, the slide in the Baltic dry index of shipping rates could be an indicator of falling global trade volumes (it may also reflect extra shipping capacity). And commodity prices (including oil) have slipped on fears the global economy is slowing.

Emerging markets, which had yielded much better returns than the developed world did in 2007, have also been dragged down since the start of the year. And riskier currencies have lost ground to the relative security of the Japanese yen and the Swiss franc.

Never satisfied, futures markets are betting that the Fed will cut rates again when policymakers meet at the end of the month. Would another half a percentage point be enough to stop the rot? One salutary thought, according to Teun Draaisma of Morgan Stanley, is that on the 15 occasions since 1970 when the Fed has cut rates by 75 basis points or more, the average gain for European stockmarkets over the following six months has been 10.3%. Fredrik Nerbrand of HSBC Private Bank thinks markets are due for a rebound because the selling has become so indiscriminate.

But even if rate cuts bolster confidence, they may not come soon enough to stop corporate profits tumbling. According to Tim Bond of Barclays Capital, the recent falls in American and European share prices imply a 20% or so drop in profits from their cyclical peak. That is close to the average decline in previous profits downturns. However, this cycle has been more extreme than normal; profits recently reached a 40-year high as a share of American GDP. They thus have further to fall if they are going to return to the mean.

The dismal dollar
Also, the Fed's actions do not just have an effect on share markets. Alan Ruskin of the Royal Bank of Scotland says that rapid rate cuts mean the dollar risks becoming a funding currency for the “carry trade”, rather as the ill-starred Japanese yen has been. (The trade involves borrowing in a currency with low interest rates and investing the proceeds in a currency with higher rates.) Mr Ruskin says that the gap between 12-month dollar and Swiss-franc rates is already as low as it was in the last cycle, when the Fed cut rates to 1%. “By the end of this cycle, dollar short-term rates will be lower than all 40 liquid currencies except the Japanese yen and Hong Kong and Taiwanese dollars.”

If the dollar becomes part of the carry trade, it will tumble even further. And a falling currency makes it harder to persuade foreigners to finance America's trade deficit. David Bowers of Absolute Strategy Research reckons the subprime crisis has “destabilised the symbiotic relationship between Asian and Middle Eastern savers and American consumers.”

Those foreign investors may also get spooked at the direction of Fed policy. They have seen the bank cut rates in response to last August's credit turmoil and now a January stockmarket plunge. They may start to feel that the Fed has turned from a watchdog against inflation into a labrador puppy. Thanks to the global slowdown, there is no short-term inflationary threat. But the longer-term risks have probably gone up. And, as James Carville discovered in the 1990s, the bond-market vigilantes can be powerful enemies if they feel neglected.

There should be a further Fed interest cut next week, with more liquidity flooding the market.

How do long can they keep this up?

I'm no expert, but I'm curious to see what affect a declining US economy will have on Australian Exports.

it should only have an indirect one mainly. Most of our exports are to china

We're not "panicked" about anything. These trends come every 7 years. No one is freaked out except fools. The rest of us will ride it out like we always do.

Then you could bail us out if it doesn't go as you say, is that right? :confused::shrug:

I'm no expert, but I'm curious to see what affect a declining US economy will have on Australian Exports.

Everyone will suffer though not as much. It is all relative. Big economies will crash hard, small ones will have some pain but sqeek by...

No body knows...but if past is any guide like what happened in Argentina....USA may lose its economic dominance. That can be hard on our military...one never knows what will happen....

it should only have an indirect one mainly. Most of our exports are to china

What exports are they?

Minerals and education. Meat and wheet go all over the place but with the drought those are down anyway

Yes but he answers only to God...remember?

Cheney's gone on record as saying they dont care what the majority thinks...they answer to a higher moral authority.

This is how they can bankrupt the country slaughtering over 500,000 people in the middle east...and still feel pretty good about it.

remeber that clinton bombing du for 8 years == nobody died...

Patching the dam with a band-aid

http://www.americanprogress.org/cartoons/2008/01/012208_stimulus.html/repository/image/item835721479

Funny since i thought pelosi came got the band aid...

Think unemployment can reach clinton levels again?

Are you trying to shift the blame somehow? This is a failure on the part of both parties.

obviously not, it is all bush's fault...

Everyone will suffer though not as much. It is all relative. Big economies will crash hard, small ones will have some pain but sqeek by...

No body knows...but if past is any guide like what happened in Argentina....USA may lose its economic dominance. That can be hard on our military...one never knows what will happen....

So the time is right to sow social chaos and possibility of xenophobia is rampant?

anyone see the parallel with the roman empire?
i maybe right i maybe wrong about what will happen but the over extended millatry, economic chaos, bankrupt goverment. If china wanted to they could compleatly shut down the US goverment. I wonder what will happen

Nobody is going to shut down the US gov. :rolleyes:

There will be no recession. (Unless the democrats take over and raise interest rates.)

Unemployment rates remain low and will not jump (despite 20+ million criminal aliens here stealing American jobs.) :(

The stock market is fine (actually UP) despite a 600-point ride this week.

The military is ok. It is all voluntary. If we had to we could reinstate the draft.

The vultures waiting for the death/demise of the USA will have to go elsewhere. :rolleyes:

sandy i think its time you stoped and looked around. How much money does the US goverment have? It cant print more that will make no difference, china is the one loaning money to he US goverment. Now if the chinese goverment stoped loaning the US money what would happen?

The millatry would colaps the day they didnt get paid, the police might last longer because they wish to help the people, same with hospitals ect but nither would last forever because people who cant pay the rent, cant buy food wont work for free. The poor will stave. How long do you think it will take to go from the poor and the public servants to the rest of sociaty? not long i should think

Never. Gonna. Happen.

why because the chiness love you?

So the time is right to sow social chaos and possibility of xenophobia is rampant?

No, the time is right to take steps so that bad things do not happen. You can not drive straight on a curved road. If you can not forecast where you are heading and take action....then the social chaos will definitely ensue.

Sandy: "Never. Gonna. Happen."

Easy there, Sandy-Head: You can injure yourself, jamming it in too compulsively.

Think unemployment can reach clinton levels again? Easy, if wages rise to Clinton levels and the military, jail, and government employee population drops to Clinton levels.

But I don't see wages rising any time soon, in 1999 dollars anyway.

Is anyone reading the latest book "The fall of the house of Bush" by Craig Unger?

Not yet. Thanks to your mention of it, I got a taste over at The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2221315,00.html).

I learned a descriptive new term on the way: "theoconservatives" (!). I'm definitely going to read that book. It seems to lead right to the heart of where a lot of recent discussions around here have been swirling:

These things don't happen by accident. They have roots in ideology and theology, and I went back and tried to trace those roots.


As ever with great national tragedies- It's not the emergence of a unitary evil, but the intersection of multiple vectors combining into debacle, as summarized by The Guardian's review:

the neoconservatives and the religious right both awakened in about the mid 1970s; the neocons came together to argue for a more bellicose US foreign policy posture, particularly toward the Soviet Union, while the theocons were thrust into political action in response to Roe v Wade. Their enemies-in the parlance, Com-symps and baby-killers respectively-would not seem at first blush to have much in common. But in fact both groups were liberals, or more precisely, caricatures of liberals, and it wasn't long at all before the neocons and the theocons were working in concert against the dreaded secular humanists.

The theocons were Christians, while most neocons were Jews, which made for a tricky alliance, but both sides came to understand that they could use each other to mutual benefit. Unger described how Menachem Begin, then the rightwing prime minister of Israel, placed a phone call to Jerry Falwell in 1977.

...The reverend started bringing his parishioners, up to 3,000 a year, over to the holy land. The parishioners supported Israel because a unified state of Israel is a precondition for Jesus's return and the joy that will spread thereafter. That the Jews are very much not scheduled to partake of that joy is something the neocons have always been able to overlook for the sake of beating back the liberals in the here and now.

Their success was intermittent until Bush 43 came along. Instructions on foreign policy to the born-again proto-candidate from leading neocons like Paul Wolfowitz in 1998 and 1999 got Bush, at that point "a completely blank slate on foreign policy," thinking their way.

Bush won, or "won," the White House. 9/11 happened. Falwell blamed the liberals and the gays. The neocons blamed Bill Clinton. The Weekly Standard, the house organ of neoconservatism, adorned its first post-9-11 cover with not the obvious one head shot, of Osama bin Laden, but with two-of bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, thereby accomplishing visually the connection that no credible evidence has ever remotely established. We went to war against Iraq, and you know the rest.


We need books like this in the USA. They need to be read. We have got to get our heads around what has happened to us, and we must learn to express it clearly to our fellow citizens. Events are moving much too fast for the USAmerican public to remain in a childish state of geopolitical awareness.

Tremendous blowback will follow W's reckless term of office. We had better figure out what it's mostly about fast, and before it hits us. Otherwise, we may be stricken too dumb to prevent the Fall of the House of Bush from taking a lot of good people down with it.

i wonder how many people who voted for the first and last option live in the US compared to those who live in other countries. Same for the second

Well, I'll take a guess, and the most indignant can correct me. I'll put a shining star by all of us that I clairvoyently perceive to reside in the Center of the Free World, and I'll leave an appropriate nothing to indicate the rest of you provincial nobodies.

No recession -71% USA
GeoffP
NDS *
Pandaemoni *
phoenix2634 *
sandy *
snake river rufus *
UltiTruth

Us recession, No world recession -76%
15ofthe19 *
Asguard
ashura *
Challenger78 *
Enmos *
hypewaders *
Michael *
Neildo *
Nikelodeon
pjdude1219 *
Syzygys *
USS Exeter *
wpoplar

US recession, World recession -71%
Carcano *
Crunchy Cat *
draqon *
Huwy
OpteronGuy *
shichimenshyo *
world_events

Wow. How revealing. Yanks everywhere you turn. I hope this satisfies your curiosity. It more than satisfied mine. :zzz:

your percentages are useless without title you know:p

Im ASSUMING that the last 2 are the percentage of US citizans but thats a guess
its interesting how much the bias is to US citizans but that wasnt the point of my query. I was interested to see if people were acting in a bias factor. For instance my own vote was towards yes US, no world. Are people HOPING for a US fall and no damage to the rest of the world. Interesting that the statistics for first and last are the same where as the percentage is higher for the second one. Could be stastical error though

Error? Impossible. It's a Sientific scurvey, and respondants were 73% unbiased. Now my coffee overdose has finally worn off 92%. G'nite/G'day.

Is anyone reading the latest book "The fall of the house of Bush" by Craig Unger?

Not yet. Thanks to your mention of it, I got a taste over at The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2221315,00.html).
Thanks for the recommendation. I'll get it immediately!:D

As ever with great national tragedies- It's not the emergence of a unitary evil, but the intersection of multiple vectors combining into debacle...

We need books like this in the USA. They need to be read. We have got to get our heads around what has happened to us, and we must learn to express it clearly to our fellow citizens. Events are moving much too fast for the USAmerican public to remain in a childish state of geopolitical awareness.

Tremendous blowback will follow W's reckless term of office. We had better figure out what it's mostly about fast, and before it hits us. Otherwise, we may be stricken too dumb to prevent the Fall of the House of Bush from taking a lot of good people down with it.

Very well said.:thumbsup:

Good thing is, there is a conservative left - true Christians who believe in peace, love and prosperity as Jesus would have taught us today. But that rank is very few. Just as Islamist are hijacking Islam, I am sure there are Jihadi Christians too.

We need a separate thread that touches economics, politics and society around this book and beyond. Hypewaders, can you do the honor? Possibly we can put this under Business & Economics as, at the end of the day, it is the Economy that brings either misery or peace.

I have a different angle. Several vectors that would come from Science and Engineering (Science is long term, Engineering is short term). I can contribute how we are losing S&E talent in favor of lawyers, politicians and religious whacks which is affecting wars, and loss of good paying jobs and social stability in general.

It is all related. Convergence of these factors probably brought down Greek and Roman Civilization. Add that to Jared Diamond's assertions, you have a making of a global disaster.

Easy, if wages rise to Clinton levels and the military, jail, and government employee population drops to Clinton levels.

But I don't see wages rising any time soon, in 1999 dollars anyway.

How can military levels be dropped to clinton levels when bush has continued brac, and thus further cut the military?

Then again I'm sure that you'd love to return to the 5+% unemployment so that you can cheer on the great economy...

Easy, if wages rise to Clinton levels and the military, jail,...employee population drops to Clinton levels..

Yeah, let's gut the military again like moron Clinton did. That's EXACTLY what the evil muslim terrorists want. Again. :mad: The only way to get the jail population back down is to deport all the criminal aliens filling them up. Good luck with that one when you have the liberals drooling over their votes.

Good thing is, there is a conservative left - true Christians who believe in peace, love and prosperity as Jesus would have taught us today. But that rank is very few....

You can't be a real, true, born-again Christian and believe that it's ok to: kill babies, pay lazy people to not work, be a criminal etc... :(

Of course we believe in peace, love, and prosperity but we have evil muslim terrorists who want us all converted/dead, criminal aliens destroying/taking over our country, and traitors like liberals/Soros cheering for our defeat/destruction. We will NOT let them win. :mad:

Excerpts from: "The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order"

**China has absorbed Taiwan and is steadily increasing its naval presence around the Pacific Rim and, from the Pakistani port of Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea. The European Union has expanded to well over 30 members and has secure oil and gas flows from North Africa, Russia and the Caspian Sea, as well as substantial nuclear energy. America’s standing in the world remains in steady decline.

** [America is] competing — and losing — in a geopolitical marketplace alongside the world’s other superpowers: the European Union and China. This is geopolitics in the 21st century: the new Big Three. Not Russia, an increasingly depopulated expanse run by Gazprom.gov; not an incoherent Islam embroiled in internal wars; and not India, lagging decades behind China in both development and strategic appetite. The Big Three make the rules — their own rules — without any one of them dominating. And the others are left to choose their suitors in this post-American world.

**The E.U.’s market is the world’s largest, European technologies more and more set the global standard and European countries give the most development assistance....With London taking over (again) as the world’s financial capital for stock listing, it’s no surprise that China’s new state investment fund intends to locate its main Western offices there instead of New York. Meanwhile, America’s share of global exchange reserves has dropped to 65 percent.... American soft power seems on the wane even at home.

**Apparently stabilized and resurgent under the Kremlin-Gazprom oligarchy, why is Russia not a superpower but rather the ultimate second-world swing state? For all its muscle flexing, Russia is also disappearing. Its population decline is a staggering half million citizens per year or more, meaning it will be not much larger than Turkey by 2025 or so — spread across a land so vast that it no longer even makes sense as a country. Travel across Russia today, and you’ll find, as during Soviet times, city after city of crumbling, heatless apartment blocks and neglected elderly citizens whose value to the state diminishes with distance from Moscow. The forced Siberian migrations of the Soviet era are being voluntarily reversed as children move west to more tolerable and modern climes. Filling the vacuum they have left behind are hundreds of thousands of Chinese, literally gobbling up, plundering, outright buying and more or less annexing Russia’s Far East for its timber and other natural resources.

**Russia lost its western satellites almost two decades ago, and Europe, while appearing to be bullied by Russia’s oil-dependent diplomacy, is staging a long-term buyout of Russia, whose economy remains roughly the size of France’s. The more Europe gets its gas from North Africa and oil from Azerbaijan, the less it will rely on Russia, all the while holding the lever of being by far Russia’s largest investor....Privately, some E.U. officials say that annexing Russia is perfectly doable; it’s just a matter of time. In the coming decades, far from restoring its Soviet-era might, Russia will have to decide whether it wishes to exist peacefully as an asset to Europe or the alternative — becoming a petro-vassal of China.

**China is pulling off the most difficult of superpower feats: simultaneously maintaining positive ties with the world’s crucial pairs of regional rivals: Venezuela and Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Iran, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, India and Pakistan. At this stage, Western diplomats have only mustered the wherewithal to quietly denounce Chinese aid policies and value-neutral alliances, but they are far from being able to do much of anything about them. [Khanna equating India and Pakistan as "regional rivals" is unacceptable as India is emerging as a far, far more powerful state and a global player. It only shows that he has not yet got over a western cold-war bias which has been discarded even by the Bush adminstration. However, the fact that Chinese policies are succeeding, is an incontrovertible fact].

**The rise of China in the East and of the European Union within the West has fundamentally altered a globe that recently appeared to have only an American gravity — pro or anti. As Europe’s and China’s spirits rise with every move into new domains of influence, America’s spirit is weakened.

**The web of globalization now has three spiders. What makes America unique in this seemingly value-free contest is not its liberal democratic ideals — which Europe may now represent better than America does — but rather its geography. America is isolated, while Europe and China occupy two ends of the great Eurasian landmass that is the perennial center of gravity of geopolitics. When America dominated NATO and led a rigid Pacific alliance system with Japan, South Korea, Australia and Thailand, it successfully managed the Herculean task of running the world from one side of it. Now its very presence in Eurasia is tenuous; it has been shunned by the E.U. and Turkey, is unwelcome in much of the Middle East and has lost much of East Asia’s confidence. "Accidental empire" or not, America must quickly accept and adjust to this reality. Maintaining America’s empire can only get costlier in both blood and treasure. It isn’t worth it, and history promises the effort will fail. It already has.

**Would the world not be more stable if America could be reaccepted as its organizing principle and leader? It’s very much too late to be asking, because the answer is unfolding before our eyes. Neither China nor the E.U. will replace the U.S. as the world’s sole leader; rather all three will constantly struggle to gain influence on their own and balance one another. Europe will promote its supranational integration model as a path to resolving Mideast disputes and organizing Africa, while China will push a Beijing consensus based on respect for sovereignty and mutual economic benefit. America must make itself irresistible to stay in the game.

Yeah, let's gut the military again like moron Clinton did. That's EXACTLY what the evil muslim terrorists want. Again. :mad: The only way to get the jail population back down is to deport all the criminal aliens filling them up. Good luck with that one when you have the liberals drooling over their votes.



You can't be a real, true, born-again Christian and believe that it's ok to: kill babies, pay lazy people to not work, be a criminal etc... :(

Of course we believe in peace, love, and prosperity but we have evil muslim terrorists who want us all converted/dead, criminal aliens destroying/taking over our country, and traitors like liberals/Soros cheering for our defeat/destruction. We will NOT let them win. :mad:

I'm confused, you are a peace-loving christian who is pro-life and pro-war?

If you ask me the housing prices were too high before they crashed and now prices are more affordable when comparable to the wages an average person gets paid yearly. I say the housing market was artificially inflated and now they are more to where they are supposed to be.

I'm confused, you are a peace-loving christian who is pro-life and pro-war?

Maybe she has those warped Christian views that some Christians have. The warp views that says it okay to kill in war for the name of Christianity for the sake of god.

Economy Experiences Worst Year Since 2002
By Jeannine Aversa, AP Economics Writer
January 30, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) — The economy nearly stalled in the fourth quarter with a growth rate of just 0.6 percent, capping its worst year since 2002.

The Commerce Department's report on the gross domestic product, released Wednesday, showed an economy that had deteriorated considerably during the October-to-December quarter as worsening problems in the housing market and harder-to-get credit made individuals and businesses more cautious in their spending. Fears of a recession have grown.

For all of 2007, the economy grew by just 2.2 percent, the weakest performance in five years, when the country was struggling to recover from the 2001 recession. The housing collapse dealt the economy its biggest blow last year. Builders slashed spending on housing projects by 16.9 percent on an annualized basis, the most in 25 years.

''The economy has been subject to something of the perfect storm here. It has been hit by the housing slump the credit squeeze, the subprime slime and stock price declines on Wall Street,'' said economist Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics. ''The economy is weathering some pretty stormy seas but it is weak.''

The fourth-quarter's performance was much weaker — half the pace — than economists were expecting. They were forecasting growth to clock in a 1.2 percent pace.

The 0.6 percent annualized increase in gross domestic product (GDP) marked a big loss of momentum from the third quarter's brisk, 4.9 percent showing. The fourth-quarter pace was the slowest since the first quarter of last year.

The GDP figures come as worries mount that the country is on the verge of a recession or perhaps is already sliding into one.

To help bolster the economy, the Federal Reserve was poised Wednesday to again cut interest rates. An afternoon announcement was expected.

The fragile economic situation has spurred rare cooperation among Democrats, Republicans and the White House to quickly enact legislation to stimulate the economy.

GDP measures the value of all goods and services produced within the United States and is the best barometer of the country's economic health.

Consumers whose spending is critical to the economy's well-being tightened their belts.

In the fourth quarter, consumer spending slowed to a pace of 2 percent, down from a 2.8 percent growth rate in the prior quarter. For all of last year, consumers boosted spending by 2.9 percent, the smallest increase since 2003.

Businesses also watched their spending more closely during the final quarter of last year. Fearing a lessening appetite from their customers, they cut inventories of goods. That shaved 1.25 percentage points from fourth-quarter GDP, the most in a year.

Spending by businesses on equipment and software slowed to a pace of 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter. For the year, such spending was up just 1.4 percent, the worst showing since 2002.

Sales of U.S. goods and services abroad also slowed sharply in the fourth quarter. Exports grew at a 3.9 percent pace, compared with a sizzling 19.1 percent growth rate in the third quarter. That strong export growth was a key reason why the economy performed so well as a whole in the prior quarter. For all of 2007, exports grew by 7.9 percent, the slowest in two years.

Meanwhile, inflation picked up sharply during the final quarter. However, for all of 2007, it moderated slightly.

A gauge of inflation linked to the GDP report showed that ''core'' prices — excluding food and energy — grew at a rate of 2.7 percent in the fourth quarter. That was up from a 2 percent rate in the prior quarter and was the biggest quarterly increase since the spring of 2006.

For all of last year, core prices went up 2.1 percent, down from 2.2 percent in 2006.

High energy prices are a double-edged sword. They can put a damper on growth and also stoke inflation, which would be a dangerous combination for the economy.

The inflation figures could complicate the Fed's job of trying to energize overall economic growth while also keeping inflation under control.

Some analysts think the economy is on pace to recede from January through March. Under one rough rule, the economy would have to contract for six months in a row for the country is considered to be in a recession. The odds of a recession have risen sharply over the last year, and analysts increasingly believe the U.S. will be in one during the first half of this year.

The big worry is that consumers will clamp down on spending and businesses will put a lid on capital spending and hiring, throwing the economy into a tailspin.

The collapse of the housing market, soured mortgage investments and much harder-to-get credit are weighing on people and businesses alike. Foreclosures have hit record highs and banks have wracked up multibillion losses. The fallout has shaken Wall Street, catapulted the economy as Topic A among voters and galvanized political figures, including those vying to be the next president.

http://www.earthtimes.org/newsimage/business-usa-economy-jobs-dc_010208.jpg

Payrolls see first drop in 4-1/2 years

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. employers cut 17,000 non-farm jobs in January, the first time in nearly 4-1/2 years that U.S. payrolls shrank as continuing losses in construction and manufacturing reflected the economy's waning momentum.

The Labor Department report on Friday came in much weaker than anticipated by analysts surveyed by Reuters, who had forecast 80,000 jobs would be added last month.

The department revised December's new-job total up to 82,000 from 18,000 but cut its estimates for hiring in both October and November, highlighting how hiring was already in decline as 2007 ended.

can someone please give the offical definition of a recession?

I have herd it said that it is 6 months of below advage growth in which case can anyone denie that the US IS in recession

Correct, it is defined usually as: Two consecutive quarters of declining GDP.

And no, we haven't had 2 consecutive negative quarterly GDPs, yet...Actually, the last 5 were all positive: 2.1, 0.6, 3.8, 4.9, 0.6%

According to the blue lines, we are due to having one:

http://www.e-forecasting.com/Charts/Jan_6_2008_rtgdpbig.gif

Definition: A recession is defined to be a period of two quarters of negative GDP growth.

Thus: a recession is a national or world event, by definition. And statistical aberrations or one-time events can almost never create a recession; e.g. if there were to be movement of economic activity (measured or real) around Jan 1, 2000, it could create the appearance of only one quarter of negative growth. For a recession to occur the real economy must decline.

Good news is, so far, after every recession, U.S. goes back to the growth rate as if nothing happened....so endure the pain and carry on to the next growth spurt.

so endure the pain and carry on to the next growth spurt.

Here is a cool site. You can put in 2 years and it shows the annual GDPs in the given timeframe:

http://eh.net/hmit/gdp/

Now you could see that the annual GDPs were FALLING between 1929 and 1936, thus in plain English it took 7 years to get a rising GDP eventually. So would I tell you that this recession will last 5+ years, I am sure you would be less enthusiastic with your yippie-ya-yee....

It was also falling between 1944-47, another happy 4 years....

Either it will last 3 years of average 0.5% growth or the bottom will fall out starting in 2012 - depending on who is the President and if we go to war again.

This time, real negative GDP can be manipulated by borrowing money and Government spending it to make up the consumer loss. Thus we could have high unemployment and yet the GDP will show, it is growing.

America still needs infrastructure repair - so time to spend government money.

That is probably true that the GDP numbers can be manipulated. I disagree with the big dependence on the president. When it is a really shitty situation it really can not matter who is at the stearing wheel, the boat is going to go down anyway...

although there is general agreement on what is a recession, what is a "depression"? I will offer the following definition:

A recessionary period in which the current GDP is less than 6 months earlier.

I.e. I am just making quantative the concept of a "worsening recession."

Does anyone have a better one?

A recession is when your neighbor loses his job.

A depression is when you lose your job.

Services Index Plunges, Pointing to Recession (http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-usa-economy-services.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)

A depression is what you can cure with Prozac...

State Budgets Facing Crisis
As revenues shrink, lawmakers must cut programs or raise taxes
By Justin Ewers
Posted February 1, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO—When Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected California's governor in 2003, he vowed to solve one big problem. The state's nearly $100 billion budget was a mess. After the tech bubble popped, tax revenues had dropped by 17 percent in one year and the state, required by law to balance its budget, was struggling with an $8 billion deficit. Schwarzenegger went into action, borrowing heavily until the economy and tax revenues picked up, and the ship of state seemed to steady. Last year, he declared victory, along with a "zero deficit."

The good times didn't last—in California, or in many other states that struggled out of the dot-com bust only to watch the housing bubble disappear along with much of their revenue. This winter, with the economy slowing again, Schwarzenegger finds himself mired in a budget crisis even bigger than the first. Shrinking tax revenues and housing deflation are creating a $14.5 billion budget hole to fill. Declaring a fiscal emergency, Schwarzenegger is asking for a 10 percent spending cut in all state agencies. In addition to closing 48 state parks and releasing early as many as 22,000 nonviolent prisoners, he has proposed deep cuts in education, trimming $4 billion from next year's K-12 budget, which would require suspending a law that guarantees a minimum level of school funding. Experts say this is no ideological, small-government crusade. "He's trying to get people's attention," says Daniel Mitchell, a professor of management and public policy at the University of California-Los Angeles. "This is a train wreck, where California is heading."

The Golden State isn't the only one teetering on the brink of budgetary disaster. The economic slowdown has depleted sales and income tax revenues, the lifeblood of state governments, for the first time in four years, causing budget shortfalls in 20 states. According to the National Governors Association, 35 to 40 states could face cuts in 2009. "Most folks did forecast some tempering of the economy; they just weren't conservative enough," says Corina Eckl, director of fiscal affairs at the National Conference of State Legislatures. "They didn't think [revenues] were going to decline as much as they have."

Congress's proposed stimulus package is not expected to present much aid to the states. Which gives state lawmakers three hard choices: Raise taxes, cut spending, or both. Maryland and Michigan opted for both last year, but election season may put an end to the tax hikes. "We're still in an era when tax increases are highly unpopular," says Robert Ward, deputy director of SUNY's Rockefeller Institute of Government. They can also be politically impossible; California and Arizona, for example, require a two-thirds majority in the Legislature to raise taxes.

Heartbreaking. So where to swing the ax? Around two thirds of many general funds are devoted to education, healthcare, and corrections systems. In North Carolina, which so far isn't experiencing a shortfall, those three services make up 93 percent of the state budget. When the state faced a $2 billion shortfall on a $14 billion budget during the last recession, it had to make some heartbreaking choices. "You can cut out the rest of state government and still not be [balanced]," says David Crotts, an economist for the North Carolina General Assembly. "Unless you get into the core areas, it's difficult to cut that much."

A few leaders, like Schwarzenegger, have begun to bite the bullet. New Hampshire's governor has asked for cuts of at least 5.7 percent. In Kentucky, which faces a shortfall of nearly $900 million, state agencies, including colleges, are trimming spending by 3 percent. Experts say tuition hikes and staff cuts will surely follow.

To ease the pain, gambling revenues are being dangled in front of some voters. Measures on the ballot in California this week would allow four Indian tribes to massively expand their casino operations, bringing the state up to $430 million. Kentucky's governor is pushing for a constitutional amendment to legalize gambling, and a ballot measure in Maryland would legalize slot machines. Some 56 percent of likely voters support the measure.

More subtle money-raising schemes are also beginning to appear. Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York, which is facing a $4.4 billion deficit, proposed $738 million in new "fees" in his budget, including tax increases on malt liquor and small cigars, a new "tax" on illegal drugs ($3.50 per gram of marijuana and $200 per gram of other drugs), and larger closing fees for home purchases over $175,000. "There are creative ways of raising revenue and not calling it a broad tax increase," says Eckl.

More at... (http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2008/02/01/state-budgets-facing-crisis.html)

Kentucky's governor is pushing for a constitutional amendment to legalize gambling, and a ballot measure in Maryland would legalize slot machines. Some 56 percent of likely voters support the measure.

Next step...legalized prostitution?

Next step...legalized prostitution?Let's hope so. America has learned the lesson many times over that you can't stop people from doing something by making it illegal. All you do is move it to the black market, where they have no institutionalized protection and no way to resolve disputes. Prostitutes in Nevada, where it's legal (except in the counties that contain Las Vegas and Reno) make good money, work regular hours, have vacations and sick leave, and get trained by medical personnel to minimize the chances of contracting HIV or other STDs. The last time I looked into it there had still not been a case of a Nevada prostitute with HIV.

Viva Las Vegas...

http://www.meganedwards.com/Vegasland/Pahrump-Brothels04.jpg

By Joanne Morrison - Analysis (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chances of the United States avoiding a recession appear to be growing dimmer by the day, and any contraction in the economy will likely last longer and be more severe than other downturns in the past 20 years.

Recent reports have shown the housing market slump and rising defaults in the mortgage market are now taking their toll on job growth and on the manufacturing and services sector.

But heavy consumer debt, a growing federal budget gap, and rising prices could make any recession worse than Americans have experienced over the past two decades.

"If we do go into recession, it's going to be more severe and long-lasting than the last one," said Jeffrey Frankel, a Harvard professor and member of the private-sector panel that dates U.S. recessions.

The nation's last two recessions, in 1990-1991 and 2001, each lasted for just eight months.

But the two downturns that ended in 1975 and 1982, when economic conditions bore some similarities to today, each lasted 16 months, making them the longest recessions since the Great Depression of the 1930s, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the accepted arbiter of U.S. recessions.

The U.S. economy entered the recessions of 1975 and 1982 saddled with huge government budget deficits from spending on social programs and the Vietnam war, and was suffering double-digit consumer price inflation.

Trichet Reverses Stance on Rates, Sees Growth Risks

By Simone Meier and Gabi Thesing

Feb. 7 (Bloomberg) -- European Central Bank President Jean- Claude Trichet reversed course and signaled he's open to cutting interest rates for the first time in five years as economic growth falters.

Trichet dropped a threat to raise rates after economic reports in the past week showed Europe being infected by the slowdown in the U.S. economy. The region's service industries grew at the slowest pace in more than four years in January, and consumer and executive confidence fell to a two-year low.

``Uncertainty about the prospects for economic growth is unusually high,'' Trichet said in Frankfurt today after the ECB kept its benchmark interest rate at 4 percent. The Bank of England reduced its key rate by a quarter point to 5.25 percent today.

The comments are a ``capitulation'' after Trichet said last month that growth in emerging markets such as China and India would cushion the effect of a U.S. slowdown, said Jacques Cailloux, chief European economist at Royal Bank of Scotland Plc.

The ECB president said the bank's 21-member council no longer considered increasing rates, as it did last month, and that the degree to which emerging markets can offset the U.S. was ``an open question.'' The euro fell and bonds rose following his remarks.

The ECB has kept borrowing costs at a six-year high since June to contain inflation. By contrast, the U.S. Federal Reserve last month lowered its key rate by 1.25 percentage points to 3 percent, the fastest pace of cuts since 1990.

Investors Predict Cuts

The ECB's shift paves ``the way for a possible rate cut in the future, should the economic situation continue to deteriorate,'' said Sandra Petcov, an economist at Lehman Brothers International in London.

BNP Paribas SA and Royal Bank of Scotland brought forward their forecast for a rate cut to April and Rabobank Groep NV now predicts the bank will lower lending rates twice this year instead of keeping them unchanged.

Investors are raising bets the ECB will have to pare its benchmark at least twice this year, according to futures trading. The yield on interest-rate contracts maturing in December fell as much as 18 basis points to 3.34 percent today, 66 basis points below the ECB's benchmark rate. It was as high as 4.36 percent on Dec. 27, and has averaged 31 basis points more than the central bank's key rate for the past five years.

The euro weakened to $1.4496 from $1.4632 yesterday and the yield on 10-year German bunds fell as much as 5 basis points to 3.85 percent.

Slower Growth

The International Monetary Fund on Jan. 29 lowered its 2008 euro-region growth estimate by half a point to 1.6 percent, saying that ``no one is going to be exempt from some slowdown.'' The Washington-based fund also trimmed its growth estimates for the U.S. and Japan, the world's two largest economies.

The ECB on Dec. 6 projected economic growth of about 2 percent this year after 2.6 percent in 2007. Trichet said today the latest data confirmed the bank's assessment that ``risks surrounding the economic outlook lie on the downside.''

Stock markets have dropped this year on concern the U.S. economy is sliding into a recession after the collapse of subprime mortgages, aimed at borrowers with poor credit histories. The slump pushed up credit costs worldwide as banks became reluctant to lend to each other. Germany's benchmark DAX Index has lost 16 percent and the Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index 12 percent.

UBS AG, Europe's largest bank by assets, last month reported $14 billion of subprime-related charges, bringing the total for the world's largest financial institutions to more than $145 billion. Josef Ackermann, chief executive officer of Deutsche Bank AG, said today 2008 will ``remain challenging.''

BOE Cut

The Bank of England's cut today was the second in three months and took its benchmark to 5.25 percent, still the highest among the Group of Seven industrialized nations. That was still more cautious than the Fed, which has pared rates five times since September.

U.K. policy makers said in a statement today they need to balance the risks to economic growth against the threat that inflation may become entrenched above the 2 percent target.

Trichet said today he remained concerned about a potential wage-price spiral as workers demand compensation for higher prices. Inflation in the 15 euro countries accelerated to 3.2 percent in January. The ECB predicted in December that price gains will average about 2.5 percent this year after 2.1 percent in 2007. It would be the ninth year the ECB fails to achieve its goal of keeping inflation just below 2 percent.

``If I was Jean-Claude Trichet, I wouldn't cut interest rates,'' Deutsche Bank's Ackermann said in an interview. ``The ECB should keep its course and not follow the Fed.''

``The ECB sounds more worried by downside risks to growth than in previous months,'' said Dario Perkins, an economist at ABN Amro Holding NV in London. ``This suggests the tightening bias has gone. But don't assume this means interest-rate cuts are coming soon. The ECB is still constrained by inflation.''

To contact the reporters on this story: Gabi Thesing in Frankfurt gthesing@bloomberg.net ; Simone Meier in Frankfurt at smeier@bloomberg.net .

Bear - Stearns thinks US is headed into recession and betting a billion on it:

"..The wager, a ``short'' position on subprime mortgage securities, was increased from $600 million at the end of November, Chief Financial Officer Sam Molinaro said today at an investor conference in Naples, Florida. The company also reduced its holdings of so-called collateralized debt obligations and underlying bonds, Molinaro said.
The sinking value of assets tied to mortgages led to Bear Stearns's fourth-quarter loss of $854 million. The company, the fifth-largest U.S. securities firm by market value, dropped 46 percent in New York trading last year ..."

FROM:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ap5RXayJzChk&refer=home

-------------------------- new subject ---------------------

Everyone knows of the "Big Mac" index used to compare purchasing power in different nation but perhaps there is a useful new McDonald's index? Here is my suggestion for one for estimating the wealfare of the working class, also built on MacDonalds:

"...sales at U.S. outlets rose 1.9 percent, more than the 1.5 percent increase McDonald's forecast Jan. 28. Sales in Europe advanced 8.2 percent while gaining 7.8 percent in the region encompassing Asia, the Middle East and Africa, the Oak Brook, Illinois-based company said today in a statement. Burgers and chicken sandwiches spurred sales in Europe, McDonald's largest region by revenue, while longer hours in Australia and China boosted Asian sales. ..."

From: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aa47iusMPs_E&refer=home

But I note Bloomberg does not suggest this is a valid index - Perhaps it is not, but the now widely used Big Mac index was originally a joke (by the Economist magazine, I think) The "Mac Sales Growth," MSG, index mainly measures how well the working classes are doing, not the economy as a whole. The GDP does that better. By this MSG index, both Europe Asia are doing more than 4 times better than USA. I think most workers would agree, but not the wealthy class. - They have been doing well under GWB, as Sandy will surely agree.

MSG? That is funny...