Steve has been predicting doom for years now. Is he right this time? I doubt it.

The economy has been weakening for quite sometime. Now the data is looking rather bad. Unemployment, up. GDP, still positive, vut GDI is looking bad. Why is this significant? Idealy,

GDI = GDP.

It doesn't because we get GDI and GDP data from different sources, the difference is logged to "statistical discrepency". But GDI isn't looking too good. PCE is declining, and that is over 70% of GDP. Then we have civilian employment droped over 0.5% in the past 6 months. The 6 month growth rate in non-farm payrolls is down is down 0.4%. Even extending it to 12 months the growth rate is still negative. And the 6 month change in industrial production is off by 1.7%.

All people like Bithead, Wayne, et. al. have to hang their hat on is the statisical discrepancy in the GDP vs. the GDI.

Partisanship much?

Micheal, yeah sorry my goof, the growth rate willb be negative.

And teh reason's simple enough. It's hard to prech gloom and doom you can blame on those nasty Republicans, if you admit there's anything even resembling a bright spot.

I see someone bought the "nation of whiners" talking point. You might be the only one though.

Why is everyone missing this?

Well, not everyone. Still, you're right in that quite a lot are.

And teh reason's simple enough. It's hard to prech gloom and doom you can blame on those nasty Republicans, if you admit there's anything even resembling a bright spot.

In this case the inference is that GDP in the third quarter will be negative.

That doesn't sound right, did you mean the change in GDP will be negative?

Are there parts of the economy that are hurting? Of course but there are always parts of the economy that are hurting even in the best of times. The stock markets of the world are chaotic at the moment. Will it translate into chaos on Main Street? I doubt it but only time will tell.

Many of you remind me of the doom predictors or Nostradamus followers. They keep predicting doom and when they are right one out of a hundred times, they say “told you so”. Else they warp events or their predictions to fit their purposes. Steve has been predicting doom for years now. Is he right this time? I doubt it. We may or may not be heading into recession but we haven’t been in one these last couple years and it is a shame people keep repeating the lies that we have been.

I agree with you on the low likelihood of a depression. A recession, definitely, but unlike the Great Depression, where the Fed stampeded its way to a large deflation, I think that Bernakke is doing a lot of smart things. Don't agree with all of them, but he's far from the disastrous policies that led to the Great Depression...

Talk of a depression is...well letting one's hysteria get the better of oneself. The recession could be bad, but I put a low probability on depression. We just know so much about what went wrong last time.

Why is everyone missing this?

Because the data is saying the economy is in recession.

Why is everyone missing this?

The euro (another ludicrous bubble) is in *real* trouble however.--