Midwest Investor asks:
"So, do we have you on record, Ting, as predicting a recession??? so far, no recession."
Yes I think we will have a recession. Go just about anywhere you please outside of Walmart and ask "How's business". "Not too good" will be the reply. Ask any regular people and listen to the belts tighten. When belts tighten, wallets seal, our economy goes in the crapper. I don't see robust consumer spending returning anytime soon, so a recession is very likely, perhaps some deflation prior to severe inflation to pay off the huge debt. I'd say the chance of a recession is over 75% and that includes a Japan like depression lasting a couple decades about 25%. Indeed I think that a 25% chance of not having either is unduly optimistic. That would be my best guess--and I certainly can and hopefully will be wrong. I just know that Brinker is pretending we are not in a bear market, so I am a lot brighter than he is. In fact looking at a Honey's Buzz where a discussion took place of Bob Brinker castigating the "false prophets" and "cassandras" a quarter or so ago. The words are chilling for those who pay for his investment advice. Not because he was bearish, no, they are chilling because he was so badly wrong and so very proud of it. Look at that BS, the economy for the two previous quarters at that time had been up a fraction and he was name calling those who had predicted a recession. He went on to blast those bearish while pretending that the lows were in March of this year. It makes interesting reading. Now you have me on record as believing we will have a recession. When will you have Bob Brinker on record admitting he was totally wrong ? When will he even acknowledge we are in a bear market that he missed predicting????
“...What we have right in here now is evidence that the Cassandras, who earlier this year, were telling us we were in recession – right now they’ve basically – well I’ll be kind, basically, they look like fools right now. Because all that they’ve accomplished with their talk about recession…………all that they have to show for their efforts is that they scared the people who listened to them out of the stock market this past winter……….”
....And probably a lot of those people got scared out near the correction lows. The initial correction low in January, which was successfully tested in mid-March, before the market reversed and resumed its uptrend. And basically, if you were to total up all of the accomplishments of the Cassandras, that would be it – that they scared people out of the market during a stock market correction in the first quarter………..Because they have been unable to present any evidence of a recession.".....
..."Brinker said: “And your questions to the Cassandras should be where are the millions of lost jobs that we would expect to see in a recession? In fact, in this economic slowdown, so far, we’ve only lost a few hundred thousand jobs total – dating back to the beginning of this year…………”
....“So what we have here basically, is an example of false prophets and it’s sad. And the reason it’s sad is the damage done. Think of the people that are looking today at the market, S&P at 1400 and they’ve been scared out of the market in the first quarter by these bears………It’s just amazing and yet these people are out there, and these people are not happy, I’m sure, to find themselves out of a rising market since March. To find themselves looking for ever lower prices when in fact we’ve had the opposite."..
".........................So it’s fair for you to say to the Cassandras, where is that recession, where are those millions of lost jobs, where are the two quarters of negative real GDP growth? Where’s the bear market? …………The answer is, they blew it! That is the answer, they blew it. They got caught up in their own negativity and they pronounced that it was all over, it was going to spiral downward and there was no end in sight – and they got it completely backwards. Truly amazing to see, and sad to see the people that are harmed by such unjustified negativity.” .... |
