syruppy

Thursday Outlook: 'As Advertised'

I understand the argument you make: that we really are in a recession, despite the numbers. However, the effect of increasing the cost of a key factor of production—e.g., higher oil prices, leading to, among other things, increased costs of energy, production, transportation, etc.—does not real inflation make.

In a business atmosphere that was less politically charged, we’d either have the price of oil coming down by now, or U.S. growth would be through the roof instead of just above zero, as investment flowed to new and alternative sources of energy and carbon, such as nuclear energy, more oil and gas drilling, coal mining—not to mention, research and development of mitigation strategies and methods.

What you see in the numbers is an understating of the economy. It is a failure to more objectively quantify—and add to the GDP—an amount equal to the apparent value of having anti-business, anti-capitalists stymie energy planning and policy as they hamstring U.S. energy production and demonize energy users.

Tuesday Outlook: Y2K Head Fake Redux?

Is it just the pattern you're looking at or re you seeing some comparisons today with the [I}dot-com bubble,[[/I] as follows:

"The [B]'dot-com bubble'[/B] (or sometimes the 'I.T. bubble') was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2001 (with a climax on March 10th, 2000 with the NASDAQ peaking at 5132.52) during which stock markets in Western nations saw their value increase rapidly from growth in the new Internet sector and related fields. The period was marked by the founding (and, in many cases, spectacular failure) of a group of new Internet-based companies commonly referred to as dot-coms. A combination of rapidly increasing stock prices, individual speculation in stocks, and widely available venture capital created an exuberant environment in which many of these businesses dismissed standard business models, focusing on increasing market share at the expense of the bottom line. The bursting of the dot-com bubble marked the beginning of a relatively mild yet rather lengthy early 2000s recession in the developed world." (wiki)

I don't see that