Crash Survival Zone

Most Americans have been told by the Bush administration and the talking heads that things will get worse for a couple of months, but then the economy will start to turn around and improve in the second half of 2009 after Bushco and Obamaco’s bailout and stimulus programs kick in.

In fact, the smart money is [...]

By Uwe E. Reinhardt

In last week’s post I argued that the analytic structure through which economists behold the world is based on certain quasi-religious beliefs on the rationality of human beings and the efficiency of markets. These beliefs can blind economists to the foibles of the real world.

Matters are worse when, wittingly or unwittingly, economists [...]

By William Greider

The nation’s fast-darkening circumstances define the essential dilemma of Barack Obama’s presidency. His instinct is to govern by consensus, in the moderate middle ground of politics. Yet dire events are pushing the new president toward solutions more fundamental than those he had intended. The longer he resists taking more forceful action, the more [...]

by Robert Reich

It’s difficult to make the case that the first $350 billion bailout of Wall Street — so-called “TARP I” — fulfilled its goals, unless one argues that the Street would have imploded without it, which is pretty much what Hank Paulson is saying these days. And since it’s impossible to prove a counter-factual, [...]

by Mike Whitney
There’s no guarantee that Obama’s stimulus package will work, but there is growing consensus that something has to be done…and fast! The economy is contracting faster than anytime since the 1930s. Unemployment is soaring, consumer spending is plummeting, and the country appears to slipping towards another Great Depression. The Federal Reserve’s near-zero interest [...]

By Mike Whitney

There’s no guarantee that Obama’s stimulus package will work, but there is growing consensus that something has to be done…and fast! The economy is contracting faster than anytime since the 1930s. Unemployment is soaring, consumer spending is plummeting, and the country appears to slipping towards another Great Depression. The Federal Reserve’s near-zero interest [...]

When governments in Europe and the US unveiled co-ordinated bail-outs of their banking industries last October, politicians and regulators rightly believed they had narrowly avoided a collapse of confidence of the financial system.

But this week it became clear governments will have to take on even more risk from the private sector if they are to [...]

By Joseph Stiglitz

As news of the US economy worsens, worries about whether a stimulus could restart the economy are growing. Making matters more complicated is the fact that our 2009 fiscal deficit will exceed 8 per cent of gross domestic product, even before the stimulus.

What is clear is that tax cuts will not help much. [...]

Societe Generale said on Thursday that the United States’ economy looks likely to enter a depression and China’s could implode.

In a highly bearish note, veteran cross asset strategist Albert Edwards said investors should now cut equity exposure after a turn-of-the-year rally and prepare for a rout.

He predicted that the S&P 500 index of U.S. stocks [...]

by James Saft

Some crises bring partners closer together. Some, as investors in the euro zone are likely to discover this year, drive them further apart.

Look for rising tensions about fiscal and monetary policy among the bloc’s 16 member nations, and for a bigger penalty to be imposed on the euro and some euro zone assets [...]