housam Jarrar

Why Aren't We Undergoing Another Great Depression?

It is amazing that a well read and reputable author as krugman would totally dismiss two very important factors in his misguided agrument .First,the big assumption that governments can control economies via producing inflation which oddly enough has never been proven,especially after a credit bubble(no examples of such a scenario can be located in any counties history..period).Secon... the governments lack of action during the great depression was unfortunate,it allowed the economy to reset.those who should have been allowed to go bankrupt were allowed to fail and debt was mostly defaulted,which allowed the economy to be revived when a stimulus plan was introduced.fast forward to today and what we see is a government that is trying to pull an elephant out of a hat,without solving what got us here in the first place.

NY Fed Model: No Chance of Recession in 2010

I definitely agree with most people posting here that the predictive powers is definitely questionable at best and flat out wrong at worst.One more thing which no one has mentioned so far is the fact that even if this tool was proven to be accurate in its predictive powers,no one seems to mention the fact that the feds have been buying treasuries to artificially lower rates in hopes of allowing for a recovery(I doubt) and how such actions can and will skewer any validity to a tool that uses treasury spreads as an indicator.

Was Q4 2008 the Worst of It?

I do agree with allot of what this article had to say,however,I believe we are far far away from a recovery any time soon.Aside from the obvious alt-A and option arms that will reset in 2009, which will lead to another round of banks tightening their belts(not lending) and raising additional capitol for the lost values on their balance sheets.The banks will have to deal with a much bigger and frightening realitiy of the commercial real estate debacle which will lead to even more write downs and further losses.There is allot of bad news that is not baked into the markets cake and I think that 2009 will in one way or another dwarf what we saw unfold in 2008.But thats just my line of thinking.