Are We Near the Bottom?

I think we have seen the worse given the uptick in the NYSE since March 7th. Equities are usually 6 months ahead of overall market conditions.

Jay C. Bohringer

I recently have been a victim of recessions since 1979 and I am going through it again. Having to look for a job this time seems to be a little different. Based on my networking and my research as an HR professional, there are definitely jobs in my field out there. It is not a barren landscape by any means. From where I sit, I know the media, financial services, retail and IT fields seem to have been hit very hard. There is no easy way for any of us who have lost a job , but continued patience and hard work. It's just a matter of matching skill sets to a company's needs or be willing to transfer your skills to another job classification. Being an eternal optimist and having been through this process 5 times (all based on downsizing rightsizing etc) you need to be thick skinned. Yet,those coming into my outplacement area seem to have moderated ever so slightly. We are definitely not through the hard times yet, but we will get through it. We will probably start to come out a little in 1st qrtr of 2010. As I have seen in many years, we came out of it before; we will do it again and be stronger for it. Stay determined, and keep your skills sharp for the next job opportunity.

I am not a big fan of Nouris Rubini. However I found this guy has some guts to say something which the government doesn't even want regular people to know. Are we in the bottom?

My assessment is not yet. Well it's debatable. But here is my couple of cents:

1. Banks still have tons of toxic loans on the balance sheet. This problem is not going to go away in any short period. Lift M2M will not solve the problem, but only prolong the problem.

2. Housing price is not yet bottomed. To borrow P/E theory, let's divide average house price by average rent per year. The current ratio is at 15 to 16 range which is bit high. I am not saying 15 is unreasonable, but this is in recession/depression. Unless the goverment willing to let market adjust for itself, any rescue or bailout will only prolong the problem. Our goverment actually is doing a very silly practice. Print and spit out money is a bad solution. A benchmark index to test the housing price is to use pre-2001 price and make 3% inflation adjustment. That's the reasonable price American people can afford.

3. There is no question about come back. I am sure we will be out of recession in 5 years.

-Bin Fang, Ph.D

"Gordon,"

Your story reminds me of a similar conversation about 5 years ago, about a rather less important subject: the occupant of the White House.

My own brother - who owned a prosperous business - told me he planned to move to either Panama or Costa Rica, just to get away from George W. Bush. My brother's business had nothing to do with politics or government contracting, nor was he involved in national politics in his personal life. So he must have been thinking the U.S. as we know it wouldn't survive the Bush presidency.

I told him I'd seen the U.S. survive :

1. A president who committed treason by seeking to overthrow our form of government, was caught and expelled from office,
2. One Congress that impeached a president for purely partisan reasons,
3. Another Congress (led by Joe McCarthy) whose purges came close to turning the country into a clone of the USSR...

And that's just within my lifetime. Before I was born, the U.S. survived a civil war, two world wars, and a global depression with 25% unemployment.

If I mentioned that conversation to my brother today, he'd probably feel pretty embarrassed.

-Jon Jacobs, eFinancialCareers News staff

There will be no stabilisation. The economy has fallen into a bottomless pit and decades of depression will follow, probably leading to large scale wars and the decline of the western civilisation. In just a few decades the earth will be a barren wasteland, with the few survivors living in what can only be described as a close resemblance of hell.

Well, at least somebody tried to convince me to believe that. My argument that compared to the other crises humanity had to cope with the current situation looks rather relaxed did not resonate with him.