If a Recession Is Coming, Why Are Stocks Up?
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on April 13th, 2012 10:35 am by HL
If a Recession Is Coming, Why Are Stocks Up?
Gary Shilling, Bloomberg
I have explained why I believe there may be a U.S. recession this year, spurred by renewed consumer retrenchment amid further declines in house prices, stagnant incomes and uncertain job prospects. So why are investors continuing to show such an appetite for equities?Stocks have been volatile: Over the past month, the Standard & Poor’s 500 (SPX) Index had three trading days when gains exceeded 1 percent and three when losses exceeded 1 percent. And major stock indexes dropped sharply in the early days of April.
Taking a Different Look at the Gender Gap
Stuart Rothenberg, Roll Call
I have found over the years that when a narrative works its way into the collective wisdom, there is no way of changing it. So my goal here is quite modest: to get at least a handful of people to pause, take a deep breath and simply chew over the data a bit before using it to draw unshakable conclusions.In this case, the conclusions involve two different Gallup polls and an interpretation about the role of women in President Barack Obama’s standing in a general election ballot test against likely GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
Jim DeMint on the Future of Republican Party
Gillespie & Welch, Reason
“A lot of the libertarian ideals that Ron Paul is talking about…should not be alien to any Republican,” Sen. Jim DeMint said during an interview at reason’s Washington, D.C., offices in late January. Encouraging words from a South Carolina Republican who has earned a reputation as one of his party’s strongest voices for fiscal conservatism during his six years in the House of Representatives and six years in the Senate.
Cannibalize the Future
Paul Krugman, New York Times
One general rule of modern politics is that the people who talk most about future generations — who go around solemnly declaring that we’re burdening our children with debt — are, in practice, the people most eager to sacrifice our future for short-term political gain. You can see that principle at work in the House Republican budget, which starts with dire warnings about the evils of deficits, then calls for tax cuts that would make the deficit even bigger, offset only by the claim to have a secret plan to make up for the revenue losses somehow or…
Paul Ryan’s Savage Spending Cuts
Jonathan Alter, Bloomberg
Grover Norquist, the tax-cutting champion, famously said he wanted to shrink the federal government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bath tub."With gargantuan deficits, that seems like a pipe dream, but it may be time to start running the water.The new plan offered by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and approved recently by Mitt Romney and congressional Republicans puts the Republicans on record supporting a federal government that within a decade will consist of little more than national defense, entitlements and interest on the national debt.
