Bloomberg - Conference Board say's indicator show recession may be over.

[JohnWxy]

Keep in mind, it takes months before unemployment rate starts coming down, after economists declare a recession is over.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aHisOoFaeD.U


July 20 (Bloomberg) -- Components of the index of leading economic indicators are signaling the worst U.S. recession in five decades may be over now, not three to six months from now.

Less-known elements of the Conference Board’s report, including ratios and diffusion indexes, bolster the view the contraction has ended. The leading index, a gauge of the economic outlook over the next two quarters, rose 0.7 percent in June, a third consecutive gain, the New York-based research group said today.

“The process of coming out of the recession, although still fragile, may be starting,” Ataman Ozyildirim, a Conference Board economist that tracks the business cycle, said in an interview. “If it continues in this way, the NBER committee will look back and tell us the recession ended.”

A committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private group in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is the accepted arbiter of when recessions begin and end. The group announced in July 2003 that the last recession had ended in November 2001, indicating their deliberations take time.

[xchrom]

1. at this point -- i'm looking for any silver lining this dark cloud has. nt

[TheWatcher]

13. It would be better to face reality, ignore the Propaganda, and learn to adapt to said reality and

circumstances in which we currently find ourselves, and stop looking to these Criminals to Save you.

They don't care about you, or your well being, or what the Economy will do to you or said well being.

But they are interested in Managing your PERSPECTIVE of Reality so you shut up, feel good, and ignore said reality. They are not even close to done with all their looting and stealing, and they need to to stay in your place. The want it ALL, and they can't get it if you are paying attention.

Think for yourself, learn for yourself, and pay attention to what is happening around you, not what The Media and the Telescreens tell you.

They are lying to you.

That will not change.

But you are not helpless.

Don't rely on Silver Linings, upbeat Rhetoric, "Hopes", "Assurances", and all the bullshit they feed you.

UNLEARN.

And then take action and empower yourself. Whatever that may mean for you.

[DJ13]

2. Its great to be at the top of the pyramid

It will continue to suck if you're even a few steps lower.

[Po_d Mainiac]

23. this comes to mind instead of a pyramid

[rfranklin]

3. "Recovery" will mean nothing to the average American...

Just look at the statistics for the Bush years. Supposedly not a recession, yet there was never enough job creation to cover the growth of available workers. The numbers were pathetic.

Right now all the excitement is over less bad results for the quarter than predicted by analysts but all the improvements in profits have been because of massive layoffs (firings) of workers. All those people who have been fired have bleak prospects and they will not be spending money any time soon. his will lead to diminishing sales, more layoffs to show profits, leading to less sales and more layoffs, et cetera.

This is absolute bullshit.

[sendero]

16. Ah yes..

.... another "jobless recovery". An oxymoron if there ever was one.

I love how these moron economists, who didn't see this coming when it was only 2 months away, have it all figured out. "Recessions last 12-18 months, so this one will be over in 4". Yeah, right.

The GDP numbers may well stabilize, but when you are shedding 500K jobs a months and there are already a record number of people who have exhausted or are about to exhaust their unemployment benefits, well recovery is not a word I would choose.

[bbinacan]

4. Good news and if true

we don't need another stimulus bill. Hell, we may not need to spend the 90% that hasn't been spent from the first one.

[notesdev]

5. You gotta be crazy

to believe that

Which of the factors that led us into this depression are resolved?

*crickets*

[TheWatcher]

10. At this point The Deluded are Terminal. Waste of time and energy to reason with them.

They've chosen their fate. They're adults. Let them have it is that's what the so desperately desire, and DAMN THEM, and SHAME ON THEM if their children become victims of their folly and addiction to fiction.

They are going to listen to whatever makes them feel good, and they are going to believe in it because they simply cannot or will not grasp reality.

You would think after the last bubble from '02-08' they would have learned something.

you would think after the most Manipulated, Fake, Bubble Ponzi Scheme in HISTORY that was those six years, and the result that came from it would teach them something.

It has only taught them to believe bigger lies.

Because it's more important to believe in lies than face the Truth.

They are in love with the Con, Enamoured with the Scam, and Suckers to the very end.

it's a mental illness you cannot penetrate or cure.

the best you can do at this point is TRY to find a way to ADAPT to all this bullshit so their weak, cowed addiction to the False paradigm they worship doesn't take YOU with them, when the next collapse comes.

At this point I don't know when that might be, but this newest Bubble is not sustainable, and it's collapse will make us wish for September of '08.

And when this one collapses, The Deluded will once again look to those who CAUSED the Crisis and enriched themselves at The Expense of the Deluded, to save them with their "Solutions."

And this pattern of Domestic Violence, this Stockholm Syndrome we call The American Economy will continue unabated, until The Deluded Wake Up, and Fight Back.

[robinlynne]

6. yeah, right.

[prostomulgus]

7. President Obama's policies are taking effect! n/t

[TheWatcher]

11. Not for the Real Economy they are not.

I suppose you are an Executive for Goldman Sachs?

If so, then your statement is accurate.

If not, see my post above.

[AdHocSolver]

8. What nonsense. The recession will not be over until job creation EXCEEDS layoffs. n/t

[JohnWxy]

20. This means economists see a light at the end of the tunnel.

That's better than when we couldn't see any light at all. This does not mean we will see full employment next week. We will not be free of The Republican Dystopia for many many months.

I figure it could take three years to get things back to something more like normal, given the degree of destruction wrought on the economy by The Republican Dystopia. I think most economists are not expecting unemployment to stop increasing before the first quarter of 2010!

We are now experiencing the joys of deregulation of credit markets. Wall street banks betting trillions of dollars on bundled mortgages without having any idea of the risks they were assuming. they thought because they bought Credit Default Swaps they were virtually free of risk!

So much for the market policing itself!

Real incomes for most people declining thanks to Republican policies which increased the wealth of the wealthiest 5%. Overly expansionist monetary policies during the Cheney administration to make a sick economy look well creating a housing bubble.

[AdHocSolver]

22. If economists see "a light at the end of the tunnel", then they are hallucinating.

This economic meltdown did not occur because bankers didn't know the risks of bundling bad mortgages, or thought that Credit Default Swaps were risk free.

This meltdown was the endgame of a well-orchestrated fraud, that has resulted in the biggest international theft in history. It was conceived and initialized during Reagan's presidency, and there were Democrats as well as Republicans in on the scam. Greenspan, Rubin, Gramm, were key players, among others.

The plan involved financialization of the economy, offshoring of manufacturing, trade agreements such as NAFTA, the WTO, the IMF, MFN status for countries such as China, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and other regulations of the financial industry, and the actions of the Fed in setting interest rates artificially low, and massively increasing the money supply.

The schemers knew full well that their actions, besides making them filthy rich, would also, cause a meltdown of the economy. That is why they merged the banks to make them "too big to fail", so as to gull the Congress, many of who were to benefit from the scam, into providing no-strings-attached multibillion dollar bailouts.

To now claim that "they may have been mistaken" is like a rattlesnake claiming that he didn't know his venom was poisonous.

[applegrove]

9. I am so hopeful. They just announced the recession in Canada was over.

Would be good if the USA picked up steam. The whole world relies on you guys.

[TheWatcher]

12. So it's true because they announced it?

Do you have any real evidence that it has ended in Canada?

other than the Propaganda that is fed to you?

If something fundamental has changed there, and it is real, I would love to know what it is.

Seriously.

I do not live in Canada, so I would not presume to know.

But if you have been actually been buying the Soviet Level Propaganda that has been spewed forth from THIS country for the past 5 Months, then you do not have a grasp of what is going on in this country at all.

But don't worry, neither do most of us who live here.

[wuvuj]

14. Comparing the US vs China...et al...

http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/the-great-global-gap-34870


The Great Debt Dichotomy

The U.S. and most of Europe are buried in mountains of debts which, even in the best of circumstances, could take many years to unwind. Brazil, India, China, and others (such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and South Korea) are not.

According to the Fed’s Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States, at the end of the first quarter, the U.S. had $6.8 trillion in Treasury debt, $8.2 trillion in government agency debt, $2.7 trillion in municipal debt, $11.6 trillion of corporate debt, $14.6 trillion in mortgage debt, $2.5 trillion in consumer debt, plus $6.5 trillion in other debts.

Grand total: $52.9 trillion, the highest in history. (To see exactly where I get these numbers, click here.)

Moreover, the U.S. government has future obligations to Social Security, Medicare, and pensions that exceed $60 trillion … while U.S. banks now hold derivatives obligations exceeding $202 trillion, according to the latest tally by the OCC.

This is a huge, unprecedented burden to every single segment of our economy:

U.S. families are buried in their mortgages and credit cards, getting forced out of their homes by the millions.

U.S. cities and states are jettisoning essential services, abandoning decades-long commitments to their citizens.

U.S. corporations are defaulting on their debts in record numbers, with worse to come.

Even the Obama administration, despite a super-majority in Congress and all the political clout it can muster, is unable to overcome a simple reality: Washington’s finances are also in disarray.

Ironically, some of the countries with the least debt and the most cash reserves today are precisely the same ones that, just a few years ago, were among the most reliant on advanced industrial nations for capital:

[wuvuj]

15. China starts it's end run?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-gardels/niall-ferguson-is-us-chin_b_245470.html


Gardels: What is China's alternative if it seeks a divorce from Chimerica?

Ferguson: I'd call it the empire or superpower option. Instead of continuing in this unhappy marriage, the Chinese can go it alone, counting on their growing economic might (their gross domestic product could equal that of the U.S. by 2030) to buy them global power in their own right.

In some ways they've already begun doing this. Their naval strategy implies a challenge to U.S. hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region. Their investments in African minerals and infrastructure look distinctly imperial to me. And now the official line from (Prime Minister) Wen Jiabao is "hasten the implementation of our 'going out' strategy and combine the utilization of foreign exchange reserves with the 'going out' of our enterprises."

That sounds like the start of a Chinese campaign to buy a lot of foreign assets. But at the same time, crucially, they need to have their own domestic consumers step up to take the place of over-leveraged Americans. China's economy is above all a manufacturing concern. If no one is going to the shopping malls, their companies are just building their inventories. So a post-Chimerican China needs to be not only an empire but also a consumer society. That means getting ordinary Chinese households to save less and spend more.

Gardels: China seems to have embraced the Special Drawing Rights idea of a basket of currencies to replace the dollar as the reserve currency. Isn't this like "serving papers" -- it shows China's intention of breaking up Chimerica over the longer term? Or, are they just hedging their bets?

Ferguson: Yes, I think they are "serving papers," or at least threatening to do so. I don't myself believe that it's practical to turn International Monetary Fund Special Drawing Rights into a new world currency. They're purely an accounting device, not proper money. But I do see the euro and the yen playing a bigger role in Chinese reserves.

I also see a day within the next five to 10 years when the Chinese will feel ready to remove their capital controls and allow their own currency, the renminbi, to develop as an international currency. At that point the Chimerican marriage really will be over. And, after all, that's what Moritz Schularick and I always said would happen. We called it "Chimerica" because we though that such an unbalanced relationship would eventually prove to be a chimera.

[GoesTo11]

17. say's ??? What is up with that apostrophe?

I'm sorry, but you can't just put apostrophes anywhere. "Says" is a very common word, and I really hope that was just sloppy typing and that you know how to really write it.

Apostrophes don't indicate singular present tense and they don't indicate plural - even in family names. They indicate possession or the dropping of a letter.

Examples:


Right:

I had a few beers at Johnny's Bar and Grill.
The economy's looking up.


Wrong:

I had dinner with the Johnson's.
I like to play with puppy's.
I use apostrophe's to indicate plural.

Flame away, y'all.

[JohnWxy]

18. sez who? (:

[ixion]

19. I've bookmarked this thread, so that 6 months from now

I can rub this in that stupid "Conference board"'s face.

[JohnWxy]

21. Here's something else you can bookmark

Testifying before the House Oversight committee Alan Greenspan said There was a "flaw in the model of how I perceived the world works."

Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan has been identified as a prime culprit in creating the conditions for the financial crisis, in particular for opposing greater regulation and fostering a housing bubble. Today, Greenspan is getting his turn on Capitol Hill. And this time, he's speaking in terms we can all understand: admitting some responsibility, while trying to deflect ultimate blame.

In his opening statement, he declared that he was in a "state of shocked disbelief" over the financial crisis, a "once-in-a-century credit tsunami.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), chairman of the House oversight committee, pushed him further in his questioning, asking Greenspan whether he'd made a mistake and whether his ideology had failed him. Greenspan admitted he'd "made a mistake" in believing that financial firms could manage their risk and were "best capable of protecting their own shareholders." In particular, he said, he'd been wrong about the danger posed by credit-default swaps.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/propublica/greenspan-says-i-still-do_b_137280.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And regarding Credit Default Swaps .....


let's not forget Phil Gramm and his Commodities Futures Modernization act which legalized trade in Credit Default Swaps and kept them totally unregulated. (this was the bill that contained the infamous Enron Loophole.)


Who's to blame for the biggest financial catastrophe of our time? There are plenty of culprits, but one candidate for lead perp is former Sen. Phil Gramm. Eight years ago, as part of a decades-long anti-regulatory crusade, Gramm pulled a sly legislative maneuver that greased the way to the multibillion-dollar subprime meltdown.

Gramm's long been a handmaiden to Big Finance. In the 1990s, as chairman of the Senate banking committee, he routinely turned down Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Arthur Levitt's requests for more money to police Wall Street; during this period, the sec's workload shot up 80 percent, but its staff grew only 20 percent. Gramm also opposed an sec rule that would have prohibited accounting firms from getting too close to the companies they audited—at one point, according to Levitt's memoir, he warned the sec chairman that if the commission adopted the rule, its funding would be cut.

~~
But Gramm's most cunning coup on behalf of his friends in the financial services industry—friends who gave him millions over his 24-year congressional career—came on December 15, 2000. It was an especially tense time in Washington. Only two days earlier, the Supreme Court had issued its decision on Bush v. Gore. President Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress were locked in a budget showdown. It was the perfect moment for a wily senator to game the system. As Congress and the White House were hurriedly hammering out a $384-billion omnibus spending bill (an 11,000 page document__JW), Gramm slipped in a 262-page measure called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Written with the help of financial industry lobbyists and cosponsored by Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the chairman of the agriculture committee, the measure had been considered dead—even by Gramm. Few lawmakers had either the opportunity or inclination to read the version of the bill Gramm inserted. "Nobody in either chamber had any knowledge of what was going on or what was in it," says a congressional aide familiar with the bill's history.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/05/foreclosure-phil



http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/26/60minutes/main4546199.shtml">The Bet that blew up Wall Street - more on Credit Default Swaps and the Commodities Futures Modernization Act