fdjake and others,
You’re all pessimists! Bernanke said it so it must be true!!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090224/ap_on_bi_st_ma_re/wall_street
Anybody want to buy some swampland in southern Florida?
–JP
Here he’s saying not until 2010 or later. He’d better make up his mind:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/business/economy/25econ.html?_r=1&hp
When he says recession ending I think he means the slide will have ended, not necessarily that everyone is back to work and we are all making loads of cash. Possibility that we hit the bottom of the slide and start to come back up late 2009/early 2010…I’d say 50/50 at best. I don’t think we’ve uncovered all of the bad assets on the balance sheets yet, the banks are probably being cautious about letting anyone know to protect their stock prices. Not only that a lot of the people that are paying the debts just fine now may not have a job in the next few months before the rocky crap is over, that should create another steaming pile of bad assets. I don’t think we’ll be back to pre-recession conditions for a long time. The slide down will be much faster than the climb up. Ski down a mountain, then hike back up…which is faster? Call me crazy but I don’t see anyone I know living like they did in the late 90’s/early 2000’s for at least another 8-10 years. At that point we’ll have another boom/bust cycle but it won’t be at the level we are seeing now.
I agree. Even while it was happening in the '90s I never understood the McMansion craze or why middle class people thought it was sustainable to live like that.