United States

In retrospect it appears Tom DeMark was spot on with his Wednesday prediction, made just as the Dow Jones was down some 500 points that that very day was "an interim low" to be followed by a 5-8% rebound (at which point the selling would resume). In fact, those trading Japanese stocks saw virtually the entire predicted rebound take place in just one day as the Nikkei soared by almost 6% overnight, or nearly 1000 points, the biggest jump in 4 months, while risk everywhere else around the globe has likewise exploded higher, as crude has stormed back over $31/barrel.

Submitted by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Warning Signs Of A Recession

In late 2007, I was giving a presentation to a group of about 300 investors discussing the warning signs of an impending recessionary period in the economy. At that time, of course, it was near “blasphemy” to speak of such ills as there was “no recession in sight.”

David Frum says that anybody who wants to know why middle America no longer trusts the stewardship of US and global elites should read this Financial Times story about the decline of Boeing. In 1998, after a merger with McDonnell Douglas, the company that used to treat its employees like family turned into a typical American corporate shark focused on delivering shareholder benefits by any means necessary. The piece is based on a recently published book based on two decades of studying Boeing. The authors are academics Leon Grunberg and Sarah Moore.

The U.S. may not be in an official technical recession yet (and it won't be until the NBER retroactively opines at some point in the next few years) but what about a half-recession? After all, nobody debates any more that the U.S. manufacturing sector is now contracting and it is only the services sector which is, at best, still growing (just ignore the last few Service ISM and PMI reports confirming that the manufacturing recession is rapidly spilling over).

As we showed previously, when it comes to banks' exposure to energy, things have gotten beyond nebulous, especially in the aftermath of the (officially denied, even though we stand behind it 100%) report that the Dallas Fed has been "advising" banks how to mark their oil and gas loan exposure in discussions behind closed doors.