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Politics : The Next President 2008 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (2442)	3/16/2008 12:21:34 AM
From: RMF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3215

That's interesting. Most people seem to think we are ALREADY in a recession with negative growth in this quarter and things deteriorating even more in the next few months. With Carlyle Capital and now Bear Sterns going belly up everybody seems to just be waiting for the next and then the next and then the next shoe to drop. Credit is tightening up for even the highest rated borrowers. Our exporters are benefitting from the tanking dollar, but they and ALL our manufacturers are getting hit by higher costs from inflation. Consumer spending and confidence seem to be dropping. When bread and milk prices double or more in six months that tends to happen. Then you have to buy gas just to go out and buy that stuff and gas is at all time highs and rising pretty rapidly. It's not ONLY a mortgage crisis anymore, it's moving into other areas. Car repossessions are rising and more and more credit card debt is in default. This stuff is typical in a slowdown, but THIS time (as the article said) there isn't any "locomotive" to drag things out of the doldrums. All the FED can do is pump in more and more liquidity and that brings more and more inflation and a lower and lower dollar.All the problems just get exacerbated. EVENTUALLY the "previous" models don't work anymore. Since just 2001 we've increased our National Debt by over $3 TRILLION and run record trade imbalances for year after year after year. In 2001 the U.S. Dollar was the FAVORITE currency everywhere in the WORLD. Today, even flea market operators in New York ask their customers for EUROS. Maybe UCLA is right, but the markets don't seem to be so sure.