Archive for October, 2011

The Fundamentals of Economic Failure

Posted October 31, 2011 By David Haggith

Whether right in predicting a plunge in October or not, I am confident that the economy is not in recovery in spite of the convulsions of last week’s stock market. Not even a little bit in recovery. The U.S. economy is merely shored up with additional rotten wood. The original rot in the floor is as […]

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Last-Minute Euro-Crisis Update: Stock Market Ecstasy Has No Afterglow

Posted October 31, 2011 By David Haggith

I warned in an article posted here two days ago that the plan for the European Economic Crisis left a lot to be desired and that market enthusiasm for the plan, as it sent the market into convulsions, was as meaningless as … well, sex in a whorehouse. Such euphoria is just what happens there. […]

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Consumer Spending Returns to Old Deficit Habits

Posted October 30, 2011 By David Haggith

Not all the news was Greek. The U.S. consumer spending report this week showed that consumer spending is up even though consumer confidence is at its lowest point in two and a half years. GDP supposedly returned to pre-recession levels, too. That came with the caveat from Paul Ashworth, an economist at Capital Economics, that the rise […]

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The Greek Crisis — A Euro-Splitting Headache or The Greek Depression?

Posted October 29, 2011 By David Haggith

We have seen it many times before in the last couple of years: dark weeks of gloomy economic news day after day — nothing actually fixed in the economy — yet suddenly the bulls explode into the marketplace over a mere glint of sunlight. We have particularly seen the running of the bulls with respect […]

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Larry Summers Wants to Fix the Economy, but You Can’t Fix Stupid

Posted October 24, 2011 By David Haggith

Apparently, experts never learn. Larry Summers writes: “The central irony of financial crisis is that while it is caused by too much confidence, too much borrowing and lending and too much spending, it can only be resolved with more confidence, more borrowing and lending, and more spending.” (The Financial Post) What he really means is […]

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Why the Government Says The Great Recession Ended When it Never Did … and Why the Press Doesn’t Get it

Posted October 22, 2011 By David Haggith

In the statement below, CNBC (Reuters actually) tells us in one breath that we’re worse off than we’ve been in 28 years, but in the next breath, they tell us the recession ended two years ago. How does it not occur to them to ask, “If the Great Recession ended two years ago, why are […]

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Wells Fargo’s Stumpf is Stumped over Economic Slump

Posted October 17, 2011 By David Haggith

“The economic recovery has been more sluggish and uneven than anyone anticipated,” Chief Executive Officer John Stumpf said a statement. [sic.]  “We can’t change the economic environment, yet we have worked hard to control the variables we can.” (Banks Slump as Wells Fargo, Citigroup Say Revenue Falls on Economy, Europe — Bloomberg) It strikes me as lame […]

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The Tipping Point into Economic Collapse

Posted October 13, 2011 By David Haggith

This week the European bank Dexia was partially nationalized by Belgium because the Fed’s bailout two years ago didn’t work. Belgium and France has already nationalized part of the bank months ago. That essentially amounts to bailout after bailout, now reaching the third round. The large international bank, in other words, is a very sick patient that […]

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Economic Apocalypse Now?

Posted October 10, 2011 By David Haggith

Bad news is good news, I suppose, if you are starting a blog about the economic crisis and are hoping to find an audience. I feel a bit like a vulture perched on a snag, waiting for the economy to die, but I don’t create the news. I started The Great Recession Blog because the […]

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Saving Capitalists from Capitalism

Posted October 5, 2011 By David Haggith

The main reason this depression is being talked about now as a “second recession” is that the governments of this world propped up the initial phase of this global depression with all the cash they could manufacture — more cash than has ever been pumped into the U.S. economy at any time in history. Thus, […]

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The Great Ponzi Scheme

Posted October 5, 2011 By David Haggith

The economy collapsed into a great recession because it was fundamentally flawed in the first place. The U.S. housing market, which underpinned the old economy, boomed because the government deregulated banks. The deregulation that began with Reagan widened under George Bush the First. It widened a little more under William Jefferson Clinton, and it broadened even further […]

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Great Recession or Great Depression?

Posted October 4, 2011 By David Haggith

The U.S. government says the recession ended in June of 2009. The economic gurus of our time parrot this proclamation in complete belief, but how has that recession ended when the unemployment that it caused never improved for those who lost their jobs? How is it that the experts and government officials ALL say the […]

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