Ten Big Steps down the Road to Recession

The Great Recession

First, a decline in manufacturing, and then a slump in service industries, now a broad-spectrum inversion of the yield curve hitting its most critical metric this week, unemployment finally starting to rise again, a one-year relentless housing decline across most of the nation and the world, carmageddon pressing car dealers to offer big incentives once again just to hold sales flat, shipping everywhere sinking rapidly, broadly deteriorating general business conditions, plus tariff troubles for the US throughout the world — all of these economic stresses have gotten remarkably worst in just the past month. 

At the same time, the stock market has soared back up to its three-time ceiling (now four-time) and managed to clear microscopically above that level. Apparently, the last recession was such a great recession, the stock market believes more of the same would be the best thing that could happen. And why not, the last recession made 10% of the US richer and 1% fabulously richer. Investors, it would appear, couldn’t be more delighted to see so many forces pushing the entire global economy — US now fully included — back into recession for another go at the best of times for the one-percent crowd.

With their best interests in mind, let’s take a closer look at all that is happening on that downhill run to recession — all the things that give investors sugar-plum dreams at night about the Fed being forced to inject more monetary narcotics into the market. Let me lay out all the recent hopeful signs that the economy is crashing just in time to force the Fed’s first interest-rate cut after a couple of years of rising rates — that cut of coke that the market is now demanding.

Read the rest here: The Great Recession