ECRI Recession Call: New US Recession To Start By Mid Year

[cieldumort]

ECRI Recession Call
ECRI Stands Firm: Certain Of US Recession 2012
The Economic Cycle Research Institute, ECRI as it is more often referred to, has double downed on their recession call made last fall, and contrary to popular opinion, they now actually have more data to back it up.

ECRI's Lakshman Achuthan made the show circuit this past week

Comments

tarot

[madman101]

i don't see this as a double, or double-dip recession, but as a depression artificially/temporarilly buoyed up by bank-bail-outs, a stimulus package, $1 trillion Fed money to Euro central banks, etc.

my strong hunch is that no matter what happens, Obama will be able to play the Iran card

Re: tarot

[squidb0i]

Ah, but will the Iran card help or hinder him?

Re: tarot

[madman101]

you'd think it would obviously hinder him - i'd tend to agree

except: i think it stacked enough, and he can play it to his advantage

this war has been in the works for years, and i think he is aware enough to see the forces pushing for it - "needing" it - so he's obviously giving the matter a lot of serious thought and planning

historically, the way the powers-that-be seek to divert attention from bad economies is to start wars

people generally fall behind their leaders when they feel threatened

if the threat is too small, THEN he'd have a rougher go at it

i think obama has always been opposed to the war, but has also played it safe politically so he might still have an enemy in Iran should he need it

it's all a bunch of manufactured crap, as far as i'm concerned. according to gerald celente, all that has to be done is to get Iran to switch to thorium reactors

Re: tarot

[squidb0i]

You had me up til Celente. =[

[alobar]

> While there was some concern that the US was falling
> into recession in 2011, that obviously hasn't happened.

If you talk with street entertainers and workers in restaurants down here in New Orleans, we have been in a depression for several years now.

[sophiaserpentia]

Money made by street entertainers and restaurant/bar workers is an interesting barometer - very sensitive to economic changes, as it represents people's willingness to spend money on purely impulse entertainment. Most of the folks I've talked to out there who've been working 10-15 years or more say they're making half of what they made back then. When economists of the future examine our era they will probably talk about the current depression as having started in 1999 or 2000.

[cieldumort]

I can see some potential for economists to refer to it as having begun in late 1999. Certainly the stock market bubble burst back then, and we entered an era of Japan Lite then. But the really, really nasty stuff didn't start showing up until 2007. If we stay stuck in another decade or more of frequent recession punctuated by crappy growth (which could be used to describe 2007 to the 2012 US recession if there is one) then I think historians may be inclined to describe it as a modern Depression that began in 2007. Conversely, if the next decade is one more of crappy growth punctuated by occasional recession (as might be used to describe 1999-2011), then I suspect they might make more comparisons with this economy to Japan's, and then date the start of this era to 1999, when the tech bubble burst.

In reality, its probably more of a blend of Japan and The Great Depression. Maybe we need an entirely new name to describe it.

I do worry that yet another global recession right now has the potential to be another ugly one. Policy makers

[sophiaserpentia]

The Great Depression was IMO a much more severe contraction (at least to date). We don't really need a new name; not every depression has to be equal in its severity.