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Update on my recession post

A while ago I wrote a blog entry about the 10 ten reasons the recession will never end. Since then, there's been some developments, so I thought I'd go back and see if those 10 reasons still hold.

1) Crashes hurt for a long time - unchanged

2) Until debt do us part - unchanged Standard and Poor's recently put the US debt on a negative credit watch

3) Lowest common denominator thinking - unchanged


4) Eroded Trust - unchanged

5) Anxiety - unchanged-- perhaps slightly better, but not enough to make a positive difference




6) Growth (innovation) versus Replacement Cycles - unchanged Cisco just announced that it will be laying off thousands of employees. Meanwhile Google announced it will be hiring thousands of employees. Unfortunately, Google is the exception. Innovation is not ramping up globally and we are still in a crunch pattern that is more about replacement cycles than anything else. 


7) Shareholder model is breaking down - unchanged. The market seem stuck at their current levels and we are not seeing people flood back in to the market eager to own stocks. They remain on the sidelines invested in bonds, gold and other safe investments.



8) Globalization - unchanged

9) Baby Boomer costs - unchanged


10) Extremism - unchanged. Yes, Bin Laden was killed, which lowers fears of terrorism, but we had the tsunami in Japan. In my previous post I commented that I thought these events would continue to get bigger and more extreme, and the Japan quake and insuing disaster unfortunately seems to indicate this to be the case. The death toll from the quake was up near 15,000. 

Bonus) Infalation - worse! Gas prices keep going up and up. 

So there you have it, pretty much nothing has changed in the past few months. For this recession to truly end I'd argue that you need at least four or five of the above variable to turn positive and unfortunately I don't see a single one with the possibility of doing so.

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