When's the Recession/Depression going to show up?

Just curious what the general opinion is on this.

I work in the biggest single employer in the country: the automotive industry. Like it or not (I don't, by the way) the country runs on wheels. I know, stupid/silly/short sighted/environmentally unsound/blahblahblah. I can't change it, I doubt it can be.

We've seen a Real Estate bubble begin to collapse. Interest rates are bound to head for the sky a la 1977. AND GM and FORD put out their big OOPS regarding their rapidly sinking sales, skyrocketing inventories and non-existent profits.

This, for me, is the economic version of the opening of the "Seventh Seal." My spin: Christmas will be RED, not White.

Your opinion is:

I'm getting old, y'know.

Democrats can take advantage of Bush's failures to win congress back and have oversight on him.

I think the recession/depression has been upon us. It's just been creeping upon us little by little, not hitting with a big bang. There's still enough people out there who can make their mortage payment, credit card payments, buy a new bass boat with their tax refunds. But that number is shrinking all the time. With an obedient media in this country we may never know when it truly hits.

Although the ink will likely precede the blood by some time.

'twas ever thus, though.

and blow b*sh out of the water, or the white house. In the meantime things will just go from bad to worse. Hang-on, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

eom

When our crash happens depends on how the Asians manage this exchange.

change to a fixed rate ASAP! Signing papers to change mine this week at least I'll sleep better at night not worrying about my interest rate skyrocking.

as world economists say it will, we will feel it in a bad, bad way. How about $8 for a loaf of bread, meat just about non-existant because its too expensive for even the stores to carry, $5-7/gal for gas, interest rates so high nobody would be stupid enough to take out a loan, rampant unemployment on the order of 20%. Real Estate and construction markets 'bottoming out', oh yea, and a new car? Thats laughable with a devalued dollar; a car that costs 20k today would have to fetch 40-45k if the senario comes to pass. "bumpy", "tough", "pretty bad" wont come close to reality -------- but the chimp don't care see.

when I was laid-off along with about 30% of my co-workers. BA, MA, MBA, JD. Still jobless.

Job creation figures are bad and the unemployment figure is deceptively low. It doesn't include new college grads, it doesn't include folks like me because it assums we chose to leave the workforce and it certainly doesn't include folks that are now flipping burgers who used to work in other more skilled occupations.

The economy has been proped up by consumer spending which was fueled in part by low interest rates. Consumers debt has now reached or exceeded the comfort level for a large percentage of consumers. It doesn't matter how much money the upper ten percent of income earners spends they cannot sustain the economy. To sustain a healthy economy you need volume consumption not high dollar consumption. Which is to say that it is better for the overall economy for a company to make $2,000 profit apiece on 100 widgets ($200,000 total profit) than to make $200,000 profit on a single widget. Why? Because there is more work and more workers to circulate money to more businesses. Left unchecked greed and exploitation are unsustainable.

As the middle class dwindles, prices and interest rates are increasing. It's a vicious cycle.

You have a MBA and a JD and are unemployed? Wow, that's scary.

The irony is that the safeguards put into place by FDR are partially shielding us from the worst of it.

Cooking the books helps hide it from being glaringly ovbvious. The best example is removing items from the COLA index when their price goes up.

Bread and milk are skyrocketing? Well, just take them offa list!

The terminology in economics needs a serious revision. The old concept of recession was NEVER a statistically valid measure. But, from a purely statistical point of view, the quality of the major economic metrics has been poor to somewhat weak since mid-2001.

Although the idiots in D.C. try to tell us the recession ended in 2002, that is really based upon a poor understanding of the relationships of various econometric parameters to one another and sets of others. If really multivariate causative models were done, and understood by these people, they would see that the economic conditions we now experience are worse than any other in the post-WWII period except for 1976 - 1981.

That period was about as recessionary as it could get. This one is just a pinch better.
The Professor

I am NOT exaggerating when I say I cannot keep up with the new "subdivisions/neighborhoods" that are popping up EVERYWHERE here. The houses being built are big, HUGE brick homes that probably range in price of $500,000 to $1 million bucks. Just yesterday I was taking kids home from my son's birthday party and had to go to neighborhoods that I didn't even know existed and I have lived here forever. They are building North, South, East and West. I am assuming it's because of the expected Peotone Airport, but STILL! I don't know where we're going to put all these new people! Our school district certainly can't handle them. We have 1 high school that is already waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over crowded and serves 2 communities. Our grade schools are packed to the max....27-30 kids per classroom. The grade shools we do have are old and in need of repair.

In Homewood/Flossmor area up North where we go to Temple, it's the same thing. ENDLESS construction.

I just don't see any signs of a poor economy/real estate bubble collapse here where I live. It's going to hurt a BUNCH of contractors and developers if a recession does hit because they are building like nothing I have ever seen.

It's not a nationwide phenonmen. That's an overgeneralization. My area is much like yours. Our area is growing and developers and schools can barely keep up.

A few green speculators will lose their shirts, but the whole real estate industry is not going to collapse.

Sure I see the "subs" going up here and there, but you can't have "Michigan" without "Detroit." It simply will not work. You can't carry a city with suburban Troy and Lathrup village.

When the cities collapse, the "enclaves" in the subs will die. Painfully. I stood on line in 1978 with guys who had owned COMPANIES, and the rate in Detroit was 30%. With no safety nets, what do you think these people will DO?? Go off and die and reduce the surplus population?

Guess again.

The Chimperor and his cronies have back loaded all the damage until about 5 years out. The chickens will then come home to roost. They'll keep the dollar low, interest rates low, and continue huge deficits until 2009. Consumers can continue to fool themselves that they are wealthy because of their home equity.

When the dam breaks, it's not going to be pretty. Usually, economic downturns come off of high water marks in the economy. The Busholini economy has never hit a high water mark. So a downturn from this won't be easy on anyone.

We've been in a major recession since mid-2001, and no, 9/11 didn't cause it. What caused it was two things: mass speculation in technology (the tech bubble) and Alan Greenspan's politicization of interest rate policy. From June 1999 to May 2000, Greenspan over-hiked interest rates in an attempt to bring down the economy and set up Bush's election in 2000. The economy did slow down because these rate hikes, but the actual slow down didn't happen until 2001.

So, instead of using the slow down to get Bush elected, the powers that be used the slow down to get Bush's tax cuts passed. Bush's tax cuts and Greenspan's endorsement of them assured that the days of Washington's fiscal discipline were over. Recall that on 09/10/2001, the surplus was entirely gone. All the while, Greenspan kept cutting rates like crazy.

Then 9/11 happened, and again, a shaky economy was thrown completely off the cliff. And again, instead of Bush using 9/11 to shore up our security, take out Bin Laden, and keep things strong at home, he used 9/11 to embark on a new war in Iraq, while letting Bin Laden roam free. Meanwhile, the tech sector, our last dominant economic sector, moved offshore and we no longer had any private sector growth.

In the end, we have a no-growth economy that's been existing on historically low interest rates, tax cuts for the wealthy, and massive federal goverment spending. IOW, we've been borrowing our standard of living, not earning it.