Comments on: 2009 – Not So Great…

By: Wil

Wil — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 02:40:09 +0000

There are lots of troubling facets to the recession… Gas is beginning to rise in cost again, if gas prices get high while people are losing jobs, and businesses close, there could be trouble…. The days of easy credit are apparently over. The continuous growth is what has been passing for progress – the endless build out and furnishing of sprawl, must take a different form for it to be sustainable. People need to learn to do things rather than contribute to servicing sprawl. If Obama’s bailout consists of trying to recreate, the success of the past, it will not work.

By: Buzzcut

Buzzcut — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:55:40 +0000

Wendy is right. Even under the worst case scenarios of GDP decline, we move back to levels of only a few years ago.

If we’re as rich as we were in 2005, is that so bad?

I also think that the seeds of recovery are already baked into the cake. Commodity prices are the lowest they’ve ever been on an inflation adjusted basis. I just picked up an insane mortgage rate, well under 5%. Bernake is looking for a bigger helicopter to dump money from.

There is a lot of money sloshing in the system right now. Obama threatens to add more money to the system. We are not headed for a depression.

By: hayden fisher

hayden fisher — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:50:24 +0000

I’m uncertain how of much this is a cycle as opposed to the beginning of a new era so dramatic that even those of us who believe we’re entering a new era will be startled by the degree and pace of change. There will be lots of losers and scores of winners too. The question is: will the public become a winner as government scrounges through the rubble with the rest of the vultures or will only the truly wealthy possess the liquidity to buy distressed assets and carry them forward until they can be resold for considerable profit (even the Great Depression only lasted a decade or more, eventually, things will come back).

I would bet on the end of the mega-corporation as an independent functioning entity. I would also bet that entrepreneurship will skyrocket. People will simply have no choice but to take whatever skills and ideas they have and try to setup their own lemonade stands to survive. We should embrace this as an opportunity to grow the new household name companies of the next century. We will be surprised by the goods and services they offer.

At the end of the day, people must survive and create new products and services in order to contribute to society and therefore derive an income or basis for survival.

One other prediction in the short-term: bartering will come back in vogue, especially with the credit system having taken such a battering. If government does not intervene to free up credit markets, it risks the development of a whole new black market for services and goods brokered by back-room loan sharks and connectors, none of which will pay taxes.

By: Wendy

Wendy — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:44:02 +0000

I think it has become fashionable to be depressing — to see the worst possible outcome. If you stop and really compare the current situation to even the 1970s or 1980s challenges of 20% interest rates, high unemployment, stagflation, etc. things are not nearly as bad, — at least not for the average person.

Yes, credit is hard to come by for many companies and individuals — but in 1982 borrowing cost 20%!

Yes, things will probably worsen before improving, but this is not the great depression, or anything like it.