The Great Recession Blog

The global economy is now stranded as the central-bank tide runs out. By the end of this year, the collective monetary inflow from all the central banks of the world, which rose to a high-water mark of $2-trillion per year, will have ebbed to zero. After that, it runs net negative for years to come. […]

In fact, I knew what the economy did last summer before summer even began. Since the beginning of the year, I have been writing that it appeared housing was reaching a new bubblicious peak and that the real estate market was getting ready to roll over. Just before the start of the summer, I confirmed that […]

If I can show you that economists, central bankers and stock analysts are blind in the area of their expertise to the most obvious setup for disaster ever, then you’ll realize we are perfectly poised for potentially the greatest stock market crash in history. Many times in the past few months, I’ve heard these people say that the […]

The following is not simply a list of negative risks to the economy but a list of of serious economic conditions that are already placing drought-like pressures on the overall economy. This list doesn’t include the long-term structural problems with the economy, such as its high debt burden, but just the forces that have risen against it this year.

Headwinds that are starting to assail deep structural flaws in the US and global economies form the basis for my 2017 economic forecast, which looks like an all-out economic crisis building throughout the world. Some of these headwinds are global; some more locally focused within the United States, but that which brings down the US economy wounds the world anyway. […]

As we enter 2017, housing bubbles are showing signs of bursting all over the world. I know I’ve been promising I would lay out the economic headwinds for 2017, but 2017’s headwinds are building so fast and furious that I’m having to break that promised article out into several articles, as I’m accumulating material faster than I have time to cover. […]

Since Trump’s election, the US stock market has climbed unstoppably along a remarkably steep path to round off at a teetering height. Is this the irrational exuberance that typically marks the last push before a perilous plunge, or is the market reaching escape velocity from the relentless gravity of the Great Recession?

The Federal Reserve is, at last, acknowledging at top levels that its economists are completely baffled, its recovery is failing, that the Fed cannot raise interest and may even have to heat up its stimulants … or we may end up with a permanently scarred and stagnant economy.

The fate of oil companies and nations hangs in the balance of oil prices. Russia could go broke. Some think that’s by US design. Saudi Arabia could experience its Arab Spring if oil prices remain too low too long. And OPEC is dead. That’s the biggest news in this new century for oil. The House of Saud […]

And it isn’t because of their fancy math or their impenetrable jargon or even their arrogance.   “We’re in a puzzling economy,” Shiller told Bloomberg TV.   The kindly professor sounded genuinely befuddled, which left me wondering how an economist can be puzzled as to why the economy isn’t working when its flaws are more obvious than […]

Here’s a scary chart. Over the past three years, U.S. housing prices have risen as quickly as they did when the Federal Reserve was fueling the housing bubble with cheap and easy credit. That blew up in a housing market collapse in 2007-2009. Prices are also nearing the same peak price as their earlier crash […]

How long was it after Italy’s PM, Mario Monti announced that the euro crisis was “almost over” until it became a bigger crisis than ever? Within a month he found himself embroiled in the battle of his career against “Frau Nein,” Germany’s Chancellor Merkel, as the world watched the daily economic news articles out of […]