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Here’s an article in Bloomberg predicting a great 2010 for the U.S. economy with growth in the range of 3.5% which seems bullish. Agree?
Bloomberg asked 58 economists, ones with a track record of being accurate, for their predictions. Most of those economists expect a pretty good year. For the USA, a pretty good year is generally +3% and up, unlike China, where a pretty good year is +8% or better.
Will green shoots blossom into a healthy garden?
Will green shoots wither, die and blow away like tumbleweeds?
Will the economy totally collapse like doomers keep saying?
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Since in any economic downturn it's important to keep the public from either being disheartened ,or an outright panic, the news will be full of feel good stories to help dispel public angst.
That said, I don't believe any opinion on this topic will be anywhere close to accurate.
I agree ^^. So much was learned when confidence faltered that a lot of these predictions are really only desperate attempts at a self-fullfilling prophecy approach: restore confidence, people will begin investing and spending more and the economy will experience an upturn, just as the article [that started it all] said that it would.
Unfortunately, many investors are smarter than that and it will take a long time to restore confidence in Wall St. and the U.S. financial system given the irresponsible behavior and the unbelievable mess that was made of everything.
Moreover, optimism is not going to create jobs. All that I have noticed so far is a lot of people saying that it is going to get better without any actual proof of it.
Here’s an article in Bloomberg predicting a great 2010 for the U.S. economy with growth in the range of 3.5% which seems bullish. Agree?
3.5% may sound bullish, but it really is not. At that rate the unemployment rate will decrease by less than .5% a year! The economy needs to grow 6~8% if the unemployment situation is going to look better anytime soon.
I think 2010 in general is going to be a bad year. There are a lot of people that are just hanging on by a thread right now and that thread is going to break. The unemployment situation is going to remain miserable and whatever hope people have left is going to be broken. It is in 2010 that people are going to start to get that this is not just a temporary glitch. 2010 is going to be a lot like 2009, just with less panic.
If you read back through Bloomberg articles for 2007 and into the middle of 2008, you will notice they completely missed the financial meltdown as late as July of that year. For a bunch of economic experts one would assume a few might have been rasing, very loudly, the warning flags.
The economy won't recover until people get decent jobs back. We have to be adding over 100K jobs/month just to keep up with population increases. The stated GDP figures are mostly irrelevant in comparison to the average person reading this.
Here is an opinion from someone who called it right in 2008. It is an opinion so take it with a grain of salt as I do, but it is difficult to discount some of his points. The main one is "what has been changed to fix what caused the failure?".
The economy will continue to deteriorate, because there is no reason for it to improve. You cannot repair a building with foundation problems by giving it new paint and landscaping. You must repair the foundation. Does anyone see any meaningful investment being done in our infrastructure or manufacturing industry? How about education, trade deficits, banking reform, or wealth distribution? These are the areas of disease in our economy. All that is being done is creation of more and more debt to purchase short term feel good solutions like unemployment, and health care. If you do nothing to solve a problem, and only take actions that will make it worse, you will get results accordingly. I believe it will take more pain before the people will educate themselves as to what the problems really are. Once they understand the problems, perhaps we can begin to work on the solutions.
I have a strong impending sense of doom. Not saying armageddon, but things aren't good. The economy is being bolstered by handouts to banks, car buyers, house buyers and others, extending unemployment stock market gains (with the wall street fees). People are still unemployed, foreclosures increasing, houses (in my area) badly overpriced relative to incomes and businesses holding on by the skin of their teeth.
Here is an opinion from someone who called it right in 2008. It is an opinion so take it with a grain of salt as I do, but it is difficult to discount some of his points. The main one is "what has been changed to fix what caused the failure?".
I agree with the guy to the extent that in 2010 I plan on downsizing my dwelling and moving into a smaller, easier-to-maintain dwelling in a more densely populated area with some semblance of public transport. I have other hedges in place regarding some of the other dangers he points to.
Nevertheless, I believe that 0.0%-0.9% growth is the most likely scenario - any spurts of growth should be slapped back down by the energy constraint -, though a double-dip recession is certainly possible, and a surprise on the upside cannot be discarded (with caveats for government number-fudging in any scenario).
Slow growth is fine. I don't think chaos would be desirable for most people.
Therefore people would do well to moderate their consumption and improve their productive skills. The author rightly points out that this, even cultural, objective has not been addressed at the policy level.
Yes, good luck!
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