The Great Recession Blog

In my January Premium Post, “An Interesting Interest Conundrum,” I laid out how the Federal Reserve was losing control over the Fed funds rate — a loss of control over its bedrock interest rate that indicates financial stresses are building in the banking system that increase the risks from runs on the banks:

We live in a time of intense scrutiny and declining trust in public institutions around the world. At the Fed, we are committed to working hard to build and sustain the public’s trust. The Fed has special responsibilities in this regard. Our monetary policy independence allows us to serve the public without regard to short-term […]

The 2018 stock market crash is now a fait accompli, having taken a polar bear plunge that put ice in the veins of the Fed and electrified their collective spine with such a deep chill they ran like a fat walrus from the bear market to halt their long-nurtured plans of economic tightening. With that […]

Laughable Larry Kudlow, as high priest of the Laffer Curve, has long been servant of “King Dollar,” as Larry has often reverently referred to US currency. The Laffer Curve is the central creed of trickle-down economics. It’s a bell-curve that demonstrates how lowering tax rates actually increases tax revenue to a certain point by stimulating […]

Two of my biggest and longest-term predictions for 2018 and 2019 proved resoundingly true this week, and my sole prediction for this year — a prediction of recession bolder than anyone else’s — moved a big step closer to coming true. Prediction #1: The Fed will prove to have no exit plan from its recovery […]

Let’s review this past devilishly whacky week to see if we can divine the way the world is turning and why the markets are churning. It was 2019’s worst week in stocks and, well, just about everything economic all across this crazily spinning planet. Volatility lifted its head back out of the water like Loch […]

Bears, like myself, picked the meat off market bulls throughout 2018. We scoffed at the start of the year when bulls concocted a narrative that said bears would starve because 2018 was going to be the year of “global synchronize growth.” We bears bawled that this was euphoric nonsense. Global economies fell off a cliff […]

We now know that the Retail Apocalypse took another trip downhill during the all-important holiday season. December reports show retail sales declined more in one month than they have since … the Great Recession. Notice what a common refrain that comparison has become. Retail Apocalypse snowballs downhill Retail sales dropped 1.2% month-over-month in December, the […]

As happened with the first housing market crash that began in 2007 but didn’t become widely recognized until mid-2008, the present housing crisis began exploding one story at a time last summer, and this blog was perhaps the first to state that summer’s change was the turning point from decades of ascent into a collapse […]

Here is a single chart that proves how completely the Fed’s end-game for its recovery failed, which means the fake recovery, itself, is failing. It’s not hard to figure out what happened here. Talk about a euphoric rise at the end of the Trump Rally heading into 2018, followed immediately by a massive blow-off top. […]