The Great Recession Blog

Two days ago Elon Musk cussed out the State of California during an earnings call for being “fascist” because of its coronavirus shutdown of Tesla. Now Mark Cuban has called him out for it. Elon Musk Earnings Call Goes Corona Viral The battle began with Elon Musk ranting, The expansion of shelter-in-place, or as we call it, forcibly […]

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. April closed as the best month for the US stock market since the V-shaped recovery that followed the Black Monday stock market crash of 1987. April also delivered the deepest, broadest economic collapse of any month in history.

U.S. first-quarter GDP plunged profoundly negative, but real GDP would have crashed even harder if not for bogus BEA data revisions. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), the U.S. economy contracted 4.8% annually in the March quarter. Stocks soared on the news for two apparent reasons. First, many media outlets immediately reported the number as +4.8% […]

Public criticism of big businesses getting a bailout from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is working as effectively as boycotts to prevent abuse that appears designed into the program by lobbyists. Presented as a way to save employees of small businesses, devastated by state and federal coronavirus lockdowns, the program doled out loans to only 19% of […]

FedMed proved dead awhile ago with the whole Bulls team looking dead on the field, until Team Trump, the owner’s club, joined Coach Powell. Then Powell’s coaching team upped its game; and, finally, the Wall Street Bulls revived. “Big deal!” the Bears now yell. “Let’s get back to playing ball!”

Ron Insana, whom I’ve always thought was well named due to the funny way his brain works and the way he smiles even when nothing is happening, has just melded minds with Kudlow & Cramer to support a coronavirus war bond: My colleague, Jim Cramer, made a very interesting recommendation Monday morning, calling on the U.S. Treasury […]

Four years after the following lead-in article to my Epocalypse series was written, it is coming true before your eyes. Some of it came true right after it was written. Most is happening now. You can see the events it describes overtaking us in all the ways it laid out, and you can go back […]

In August of 2015 I started writing about The Great Recession 2.0 that was coming upon us. I called it “The Epocalypse” to signify an economic apocalypse that would be epic in scale and that would begin a new epoch on earth — a turbulent time of great global financial decline.

From Eurocrisis to Coronacrisis, the EU and Hungary fracture over national pandemic responses and civil-liberties. Hungary could be the next Brexit. European leaders see an existential threat to the Union as Hungary’s PM seizes full dictatorial power.

The World Health Organization now says the death rate of the new coronavirus is significantly higher than influenza, though much lower than earlier epidemics that had far less socio-economic impact, such as SARS, MERS, and Ebola.

Back in the oil-embargo recession of the early 70s when Boeing was Seattle’s economy and was laying off thousands of Seattleites, a billboard on the edge of town by Sea-Tac Airport read, “Will the last person leaving Seattle turn the lights out?” (Boeing had gone from 100,800 employees in 1967 to 38,690 in 1971.)

The economy was already heaving in the toilet before COVID-19 dropped the lid on its head and sat on it. Sales, revenue, real earnings, manufacturing, and finally the services industry had all puked. Last week, stocks got the Great Flush as the market went down with the economy.