Worse than the Great Depression?

I picked this up over on VOX. They have an interesting analysis of the current state of affairs economically and the great depression.

To sum up, globally we are tracking or doing even worse than the Great Depression, whether the metric is industrial production, exports or equity valuations. Focusing on the US causes one to minimise this alarming fact. The “Great Recession” label may turn out to be too optimistic. This is a Depression-sized event.

They also present a series of charts to back up there analysis. Here is an example.



To read more, go here.

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Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism

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Trend World Protectionism on the Rise

I think most people believe that trade barriers are a bad thing. World protectionism and trade barriers prolonged the recession and impacted trade negatively in the 1930s.

I have to ask myself--have we really learned anything from the past? Or, are we doomed to repeat the same old mistakes?

Seventeen of the G-20 countries recently implemented 47 measures whose effect is to restrict trade at the expense of other countries. I can just hear the analyst on TV--this is no big deal and it won't have a big impact on trade.

These analyst, are the same analyst that, told us over and over that the housing bubble wouldn't have a big effect on the economy or stocks. Right Larry Kudlow? The same analyst that failed to see the interconnectedness of banks and financial companies--as Bear Stears, Lehman, and AIG went down the tube and brought other companies that did business with them to the brink of disaster.

For some reason, analyst have a problem seeing how things are interconnected. They are either dumb, myopic, or in a state of denial like most the country.

You hear the words global economy over and over. There can be no doubt that the world economy is now interconnected. It should be obvious that if one spoke in this interconnectedness breaks the entire wheel stops working. Think of it like the wheel on a bike--when the spoke breaks the wheels gets all wobbly. If you keep riding on the wheel, it will eventually weaken and then collapse. The lesson from this story is, if you fix the broken spoke immediately--the wheel works just fine. But if you keep riding on the bad wheel--it collapses.

There is, at the minimum, anecdotal evidence that global protectionism is on the rise. What are world leaders and politicians likely to do to satisfy angry constituents when their job is on the line? At first, they will stick a lollipop in the mouth of their constituents. But, if that doesn't work, they will give them what they want to perpetuate themselves in office. This is worrisome.

Over here in the U.S. we are now protecting steel, soon it will be the importation of foreign automobiles, then what? For every action there is likely to be an equal and opposite reaction. These are trends that investors need to be watching. Excessive protectionism could cause the next collapse in stock prices. As an investor you need to keep your eyes and ears open--you really need to pay attention to trends and how they can effect stock prices. Like it says up at the top:

How to make money in the market...think beyond the obvious...spot the trends...and do your homework.

If you would like to read about protectionism go here.

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Roubini on Interest Rates, Global Fiscal Policy, and Housing (Part Three)

Roubini on interest rates, global fiscal policy, and housing.

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Roubini on Global Recession, Credit Crunch, and Deflation (Part Two)

Part two of Nouriel Rubini's speech at the 2009 CBOE Risk Management Conference. He discusses several topics including: the credit crunch,  global recession, and deflation.

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Merrill goes negative on global GDP growth

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Global job losses could reach 50 million

This statistic does not bode well for the global economy.

Worldwide job losses from the recession that started in the United States in December 2007 could hit a staggering 50 million by the end of 2009, according to the International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency.

The International Monetary Fund expects that by the end of the year, global economic growth will reach its lowest point since the Depression, according to Charles Collyns, deputy director of the fund’s research department. The fund said that growth had come to “a virtual halt,” with developed economies expected to shrink by 2 percent in 2009.

This is particularly disturbing because it could very well lead to global protectionism and we know from history this is not a good thing for stock investors. I think we already proved that history has a way of repeating itself and that man tends to respond to economic problems with expedient solutions. Expediency could easily lead to the same old mistakes.

We really need to be watching employment worldwide. Meanwhile, you should consider being extremely risk averse at this time.

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Job Losses Pose a Threat to Stability Worldwide

By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
PARIS — From lawyers in Paris to factory workers in China and bodyguards in Colombia, the ranks of the jobless are swelling rapidly across the globe.

Worldwide job losses from the recession that started in the United States in December 2007 could hit a staggering 50 million by the end of 2009, according to the International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency. The slowdown has already claimed 3.6 million American jobs.

High unemployment rates, especially among young workers, have led to protests in countries as varied as Latvia, Chile, Greece, Bulgaria and Iceland and contributed to strikes in Britain and France.

Last month, the government of Iceland, whose economy is expected to contract 10 percent this year, collapsed and the prime minister moved up national elections after weeks of protests by Icelanders angered by soaring unemployment and rising prices.

Just last week, the new United States director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, told Congress that instability caused by the global economic crisis had become the biggest security threat facing the United States, outpacing terrorism.

“Nearly everybody has been caught by surprise at the speed in which unemployment is increasing, and are groping for a response,” said Nicolas Véron, a fellow at Bruegel, a research center in Brussels that focuses on Europe’s role in the global economy.

In emerging economies like those in Eastern Europe, there are fears that growing joblessness might encourage a move away from free-market, pro-Western policies, while in developed countries unemployment could bolster efforts to protect local industries at the expense of global trade.

Indeed, some European stimulus packages, as well as one passed Friday in the United States, include protections for domestic companies, increasing the likelihood of protectionist trade battles.

Protectionist measures were an intense matter of discussion as finance ministers from the Group of 7 economies met this weekend in Rome.

While the number of jobs in the United States has been falling since the end of 2007, the pace of layoffs in Europe, Asia and the developing world has caught up only recently as companies that resisted deep cuts in the past follow the lead of their American counterparts.

The International Monetary Fund expects that by the end of the year, global economic growth will reach its lowest point since the Depression, according to Charles Collyns, deputy director of the fund’s research department. The fund said that growth had come to “a virtual halt,” with developed economies expected to shrink by 2 percent in 2009.

“This is the worst we’ve had since 1929,” said Laurent Wauquiez, France’s employment minister. “The thing that is new is that it is global, and we are always talking about that. It is in every country, and it makes the whole difference.”

In Asia, any smugness at having escaped losses on American subprime debt has been erased by growing despair over a plunge in sales among major exporters. On Thursday, Pioneer of Japan said it would abandon the flat-screen television business and cut 10,000 jobs worldwide in response to sagging demand for consumer electronics.

Millions of migrant workers in mainland China are searching for jobs but finding that factories are shutting down. Though not as large as the disturbances in Greece or the Baltics, there have been dozens of protests at individual factories in China and Indonesia where workers were laid off with little or no notice.

The breadth of the problem is also becoming apparent in Taiwan, where exports were down 42.9 percent last month, compared with a year ago, the steepest plunge in Asia.

Chang Yung-yun, a 57-year-old restaurant kitchen worker, was laid off when her employer closed in mid-November. Her son, an engineer, has been put on unpaid vacation for weeks, a tactic that has become common in Taiwan.

“The greatest fear for our people is losing jobs,” Taiwan’s president, Ma Ying-jeou, said in an interview.

Calls for protectionism have resonated among a fearful public. In Britain, refinery and power plant employees walked off the job last month to protest the use of workers from Italy and Portugal at a construction project on the coast. Some held up signs highlighting Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s earlier promise of “British jobs for British workers.”

Unemployment in Britain is expected to rise to 9.5 percent by the middle of 2010, from 6.3 percent now, according to Peter Dixon, an economist with Commerzbank in London. Germany’s jobless rate could rise to 10.5 percent from 7.8 percent, he added.

In France last week, President Nicolas Sarkozy agreed to supply low-interest loans of 3 billion euros, or $3.86 billion, each to PSA Peugeot Citroën and Renault in exchange for an agreement not to lay off French workers.

To a greater extent than in past European downturns, highly trained white-collar workers are pounding the pavement, too. Naomi Runquist-Ohayon, a trademark lawyer, has been looking for work in Paris since the beginning of the year, after losing her job in December.

“This is a new experience for me,” said Ms. Runquist-Ohayon, 39, a Swedish native who has lived in Paris and London and speaks fluent English, French, Swedish and Italian. “In London, I never had to really look. Recruiters or headhunters would call me or I would call them. It’s not so easy now.”

Half a world away in Colombia, Jaime Galeano, 40, is in a similar predicament. As a bodyguard in a country notorious for drug-related violence and kidnappings, Mr. Galeano thought his profession was immune until he lost his job last year.

“The conditions for finding a job are terrible,” he said. What is more, his age is now an impediment, with a ministry informing him that only applicants under the age of 32 would be considered for new positions.

“After turning 35, a person is worth nothing,” Mr. Galeano said.

Even India, whose startling rise to the forefront of the global economy was portrayed in the hit movie “Slumdog Millionaire,” has hit a wall. About 500,000 people lost jobs between October and December 2008, according to one recent analysis.

In New Delhi, Tarun Lamba lost the first real job he ever had about a month ago, when he was laid off as a sales manager. Mr. Lamba, 24, said he knew bad news was coming because it had been weeks since he had written a truck loan. If he has to, he said, he could join his father’s business, selling clothes. But he hopes it will not come to that.

“The cycle has to keep running,” he said. “We had a boom period one year ago, now we are in a recession, and after some time the boom will come again.”

Many newer workers, especially those in countries that moved from communism to capitalism in the 1990s, have known only boom times since then. For them, the shift is especially jarring, a main reason for the violence that exploded recently in countries like Latvia, a former Soviet republic.

“For the young generation, aged 20 to 24, this is the first time we’ve had this,” said Valdis Zatlers, Latvia’s president.

The ripples from the slowdown in Europe, North America and Asia are also being felt in Africa as migrant workers abroad lose their jobs and find themselves unable to send money home.

Since his last temporary job as a metalworker in Paris ended three months ago, Ignace Abdul has halted the monthly 200 euro payments he had been sending to his wife and three children back in Senegal. “Between 2004 and 2008, I worked nonstop,” Mr. Abdul, 30, said in an interview in a bleak Paris unemployment office. “Right now, there is nothing.”

Reporting was contributed by Keith Bradsher from Taipei, Taiwan; Heather Timmons from New Delhi; Simon Romero and Jenny Carolina González from Bogota, Colombia; and Maïa de la Baume from Paris.

Previously on All American Investor

Ray Dalio on the current state of affairs in the market

Homebuyer Credit Won’t Stabilize Market, Analysts Say

Roubini Predicts U.S. Losses May Reach $3.6 Trillion



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