I’ve been sick this week, and have been watching a bunch of CNBC as a result. I keep hearing over and over, recession, recession, recession… ENOUGH!
It is like a huge media weight trying to push down the economy. Sure, home prices are down, oil is high, gold is through the roof, the fed is easing but it just doesn’t all add up… We are definitely going into a big slow down and I think we are going to be feeling it a bit, however I’m still bullish on the market in general.
The jobs data looks good, the stock market is cheap, the fed is going to continue to drop rates, credit will ease, corporate profits are still strong – slowing but strong, the dollar is going to continue to weaken for a bit which actually helps our export position, overall… it’s going to s l o w things down. I don’t think it is going to kill us though.
There just really isn’t anything new…
Since my position seems to be against the general media flow, I did a little research and found a couple pieces of commentary today that support it. The first from Fast Money this afternoon. If you didn’t watch or Tivo it yourself, you can get a quick summary at this link from CNBC. Here is a quote from from the summary article:
Darda believes that the economy is not headed for a recession, although he concedes it could be slowing down. He adds, even this week’s ISM number, which showed a sharp contraction in manufacturing but not other areas of the economy, was not low enough on a historical basis to suggest recession.
Jobless claims are a leading indicator of the economy, he adds. They usually go up 25% year over year ahead of recession. We’re up 7.5%.
Another great bit of fact from an older Kudlow & Company episode on CNBC…
Let me just point out that without housing, 3rd quarter GDP was 6 percent annualized growth. You have to remember that going back into the 2nd quarter, [bearish economist] Nouriel [Roubini] and others were saying 3rd quarter was only going to have 2 percent growth. So these pessimists have been way, way, wrong on the low side. They have been continually blown out of the water by stronger than expected data.
And I don’t care what weekly chain store sales are saying, and all of these things. We’ve constantly had revisions upward. We’ve constantly had better news. And I think all you have to do is go outside. You can’t get a parking spot at the mall; you have to wait in line to get a table at a restaurant; you get middle seats on the airplane. There’s no evidence that this economy is slowing down. -Brian Wesbury, Chief Economist at First Trust Advisors
Finally, I was watching Kudlow & Company today and even Ben Stein agrees with me! The economists have it right, the media not so much.
Look, we live in a global economy. The fact of the matter is that world economy has a dramatic effect on the United States economy. Of course we have domestic issues that must be addressed; however, we just cannot ignore the global effect. It continues to ripple back to American companies and that will help us avoid recession. Is it going to be ugly- yeah, I think it will be – but not the end of the world.
Anyhow… predictions are predictions, my guess is as good as the next guys. If you have an opinion, I’d love to hear it.
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