The Great Recession Blog

Consider this a travelogue in pictures (graphs and charts really) that presents a rather striking and comprehensive image of a nation journeying into recession. Our decline is steeper now than it was even in my retelling of economic turns during the summer and early fall.

“Show me the data,” demand those who cannot see a recession forming all around them and who keep parroting what they are told about the economy being strong because it is what they want to believe; yet, the data look like an endless march through a long summer down the road to recession.

The Great Recession never ended. I say that because the deep economic flaws that caused it were never corrected. All recovery efforts since merely clouded our eyes to the problems growing larger around us, even making them worse, and now we are going back into the belly of the Great Recession.

As noted in my last article, “Fed Loses Control of its Benchmark Interest,” bank liquidity strains are written all over this month’s troubles. Some may find that hard to believe because there is so much hot air (fiat money) still floating the system from a historical standpoint. There is a sound fundamental reason, however, that […]

Pretty good if you ask me. Most economic indicators this year have moved relentlessly in the direction of recession, and now the Cass Freight Index is saying a US recession may start in the 3rd quarter, fitting up nicely to my prediction that we would be entering recession this summer.

Let’s take a look at how the average consumer is doing. I’ll call this typical consumer “Bubba” because I just read an article that claimed “Bubba’s doing better today than at any time since before the Korean War.” It disgusted me because I found it to be such a disingenuous set of lies wrapped in […]

Oh my gosh, what a load of BULL I keep reading among the gurus who whine about negative headlines and complain that this unmerited negativity is the only thing that is killing the bull market. Bull. The bellowing bulls cry every time someone runs a negative headline, “Stop, you’re breaking our bull market with your […]

The US debt ceiling is likely about to be lifted. When it is, it will release a deluge of government debt issuance that has backed up for four months. That could cause a temporary spike in bond yields as so much debt rushes out to find buyers. That has sometimes happened at such junctures in […]

A journey in photos and facts to compare the present Great Recession with the past Great Depression to gain perspective on where we might be headed.

News of significant recessionary drops in the US became as relentless this past week as the ping, ping, pang of drips from a leaking ceiling hitting pans in the New York Stock Exchange. I’ve been saying you would hear the sounds of recession everywhere as soon as the second-quarter earnings reporting season began this summer. […]

The Federal Reserve knows we are in a failing economy, or it would not be holding town meetings all over the US to prepare the public for actions more extreme than we are used to seeing. Hear what the Fed is seeing fall around us and why it is rapidly switching back to recovery mode.

This month the economic expansion brought to you by your Federal Reserve and by US government largess becomes the longest expansion in the history of the United States! That’s something, right? Something? Let’s take an honest look at what we now call great.