[Zzlist-deux] THE US ECONOMY: A MID-YEAR REPORT CARD

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A new posting -
THE US ECONOMY: A MID-YEAR REPORT CARD
<http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-us-economy-mid-year-report-card.html>
- from Zoltan Zigedy is available at:
http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/


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 It's no secret that investors are frightened. A fog of uncertainty hangs
over US equity markets, with Wall Street mavens reassuring each other that
the course ahead is promising. Activity is down and performance volatile,
with institutional investors and fast traders catching small waves at the
end of trading days. Fear over Greek negotiations and a possible Federal
Reserve increase in interest rates haunt the investment banks, fund
managers, and other institutional investors.
 US commentators hopefully hail any modestly positive economic news-- an
encouraging employment gain here, a small spike in consumer spending there.
At the same time, they are deathly afraid of a dampening interest rate
hike. Frequent bad news -- like the first-quarter drop in GDP in three of
the last five years -- is either dismissed as weather related or
conveniently attributed to other non-systemic factors.

Cautious, wary signals crop up in newspaper headlines: “Postcrisis
Financial-System Risk Casts a Darkening Shadow” (*WSJ*, 4-9-15), “A World
Awash in Almost Everything” (*WSJ*. 4-25/26-15), “Tech Investors See the
Froth, but None Dare Call It a Bubble” (*NYT*, 5-25-15). Warnings about
“bloated” stocks by the Fed chairman, and alarm over declines in business
investment, industrial production and worker productivity, all cast a
shadow over the cheer leading of stock purchase evangelists and other
financial hucksters.
 And then there is the eccentric David Stockman-- President Reagan's former
budget director-- who makes a convincing case regularly that the sky is
falling. He forewarns:
 What is coming, therefore, is not their father’s inflationary spiral, but
an unprecedented and epochal global deflation...
 What ultimately stops today’s new style central bank credit cycle,
therefore, is bursting financial bubbles.
 That has already happened twice this century. A third proof of the case
looks to be just around the corner. (4-5-15)


*Where Are We Headed?*

*To read the rest of the posting, go to: http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/
<http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/>*
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