Subscribe to Dollars & Sense magazine. Recent articles related to the financial crisis. Co-centric Vicious CyclesThis posting is from D&S collective member and frequent blogger Larry Peterson. To see more of his posts, click here.The European Central Bank and Bank of England, as expected, cut interest rates (with the BoE coming down an unprecedented 1.5% to 3.0%), but exceedingly poor corporate and consumer outlooks are pulling stocks down anyway. In Asia, both the Japanese Nikkei and Hang Seng in Hong Kong endured terrible losses. Obama is putting on a full-court press to contain the damage (expect him to name Clinton ex-Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers or New York Fed chair Timothy Geither today to head the Treasury Department), but if stocks continue their slide, he'll have to announce some sort of stimulus proposal, probably involving infrastructure spending, very soon. It remains extremely worrying that extraordinary measures, like the BoE cut, and circumstances, like the hurry-up Obama transition, have exerted only temporary effects on a downward spiral in global markets that has seen trillions wiped away from pension funds and other forms of wealth people really rely on (not just the ill-gotten gains of the filthy-rich), in just a few weeks: there will be a real shock when people get their fourth-quarter 401 K statements, even if they don’t spend much on Christmas shopping, which will itself deliver another body-blow to the economy. And, meanwhile, hedge fund redemptions continue, and that cycle of deleveraging shows no sign of abating: in fact, be prepared for an uptick in hedge fund bankruptcies. What you have here is a series of co-centric vicious cycles, all collapsing into each other. What anyone can do to stop it is still anyone's guess. Tomorrow the employment report for October comes out, and I believe it will be horrible (expect 150,000 jobs to be gone). At this rate, the Obama administration could be worn out before it even officially takes office. Labels: Bank of England, Barack Obama, european central bank, financial crisis, Larry Peterson, larry Summers, stock market, Timothy Geither Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). |
