Bickel Blog

Some pretty sobbering forecasts from Goldman Sachs means more bad news is on the way. Highlights to me are the fact we could go over 9% unemployment (meaning 50% more people will be without a job than today), and that inflation will be negative (but they say this is not really the "D" word). The bolding is mine... BOTTOM LINE: We have marked down our forecasts for US real GDP in response to continuing signs of falling domestic and foreign demand, labor market deterioration, renewed tightening in financial conditions, and an apparent impasse in fiscal policy pending the transfer of power to the Obama administration in late January. As a result, we expect the unemployment rate to reach 9% by the fourth quarter of 2009, profits to fall 25% for 2009 as a whole following an estimated 10% drop this year, and the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to use nontraditional policy tools more aggressively, as detailed below. MAIN POINTS: 1. A weaker growth profile...We now estimate ...

The DJIA went below 8000 today. A financial person told me that if you listen to the sage advice of Buffet, Lynch, etal, then you will invest now because it is tough to time market bottoms. But I just saw a headline that makes me thing we have not hit bottom yet. The title was " Dow falls below 8,000, S&P at 5-year low ". If this is the worst financial crisis since the Depression, and it is much broader than the 2000-2003 meltdown, then why would the stock market not reflect that? IMHO the world economy is far worse with no real tangible turnaround on the horizon in spite of the Goverment's efforts to free up the money supply and increase the velocity of money. So the stock market is in for more downward trends...

I have never been more proud of our country.