Consider this a travelogue in pictures (graphs and charts really) that presents a rather striking and comprehensive image of a nation journeying into recession. Our decline is steeper now than it was even in my retelling of economic turns during the summer and early fall.
While the stock market has continued to rise (and I never said it wouldn’t rise this year until and unless recession begins and takes it down), earnings — upon which stock valuations used to be based in times long ago — have gone down quarter after quarter — both actual earnings and projected.
Earnings would be much further down if not boosted by tax cuts, and earnings-per-share (down on average 2.3% YoY) would be down even more if not boosted by massive share buybacks because business revenue is generally down (lowest since the Obama years). Sales are generally down. Fourth-quarter revenue and earnings are projected to be lower still on a broader basis that includes services. These downshifts in revenue are likely to result in further cost-cutting in order to keep earnings from sinking as much, and those cost-cutting measures could include labor, thus slowering consumer capacity, which has been the only thing left holding the economy’s head above water.
Read the rest here: The Great Recession