| HappySqurriel said: The value of the stock market is not representitive of the state of the economy good or bad, and movement within the markets in the short to medium term are much more related to emotional speculation than the fundimentals of the economy. The spin that "Unemployment is the last thing to improve" so any signs of stabilization of unemployment are automatically a sign that things are getting better is 100% bullshit. When you're facing a longer term and deeper economic slowdown there are always plateaus and local mamimums in most economic indicators before something changes (for the worse) and then the indicators all become negative for awhile again. The reason for this is simple, and is (basically) the same reason why people claim unemployment is the last thing to improve ... no one knows what the economy will look like a year from now, and most companies and individuals are likely going to maintain their spending level at their new adjusted level until they see a sign that the recession is truely behind them unless they need to change it. Companies tend to only increase their workforce after they have seen dramatic improvement in their bottom line. Generally speaking, the massive consumer orgy that drive the American economy is not going to recover until people have access to the extremely moronic levels of credit that were available prior to the beginning of the recession and consumer confidence returns. Right now consumer confidence does not show signs of returning to its previous high levels, and as long as more and more mortgages are underwater it is unlikely that consumers will have access to the credit levels they used to. In other words ... The recession is not over, we could easily be in the eye of the storm and after people evaluate the back-to-school shopping season and adjust expectations for the holiday shopping season we could see reduced orders from companies, higher unemployment, and lower profits for companies.
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That's all well and good, but everything you are saying is way too speculative. Lets make some predictions. You tell me where you think GDP growth will be in Q3 and Q4 and where unemployment will be at the end Q3 and Q4. You act like you know a lot about this stuff, so I am going to put you to some hard numbers that you can't wiggle your way out of to test how valid your predictions and methodology really are. I'm more than willing to make predictions that you can hold me to.
My predictions:
Q3:
GDP Growth: 3%
Unemployment: Will not go above 10%, will settle around 9-9.2%, maybe lower.
Q4:
GDP Growth: 5%
Unemployment: Will drop down to around 8.5%. I would be surprised if it went below 8%.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
