No one could have predicted...
March 13, 2009: Don Hodges, chairman of Hodges Capital Management in Dallas, said he doesn't fault CNBC for not seeing the bust coming."I'm not sure that anybody had seen it coming," he said. "I've listened to all of the so-called experts, and it's obvious that everybody is very confused."
Only those who have had their heads up their asses. (And let those of you with your livelihood at Hodges Capital Management beware.)
March 13, 2008Global stocks tumbled and the dollar fell further Thursday as the effects of Federal Reserve efforts to restore liquidity to financial markets faded and the investment fund Carlyle Capital succumbed to the credit crisis.The severity of its liquidity problems indicates that the unfolding financial crisis is taking major parts of the US financial and political elite down with it.[...]
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Carlyle is by no means the only elite US private capital group in serious trouble. Blackstone Group, manager of the world's largest buyout fund, said fourth-quarter profit plunged 89% after a "meltdown" in the credit markets and warned that getting loans for takeovers will be difficult in 2008.
March 18, 2008"The crisis will leave many casualties. Particularly hard hit will be much of today's financial risk-valuation system," [former Fed chairman Alan Gresnspan] wrote.[...]
"It will eventually fail and a disturbing reality will be laid bare, prompting an unexpected and sharp discontinuous response," Greenspan said .
March 4, 2008The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the federal agency that backs bank deposits, last week reported the biggest jump in "problem institutions" it has seen since the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s.[...]
Jaret Seiberg, the financial services analyst for policy research firm Stanford Group, said it appears that regulators are expecting about 200 bank failures in the coming year or two.
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[T] he head of the FDIC is looking to hire 25 staffers to deal with an anticipated increase in failures, a move that would increase its staff by 11%. Among those it hopes to hire are recent retirees who worked through the S&L crisis.
November 6, 2007Central bankers past and present warned on Tuesday of more pain to come for the U.S. economy and that banks worldwide could take several months yet to reveal full losses from U.S. subprime mortgage lending.[...]
Estimates of eventual total losses vary but all the figures put forward are staggering.
JPMorgan (JPM.N) thinks the financial services industry is sitting on $60 billion in undisclosed losses.
August 17, 2007Economists said the sluggish performance of the chains — Wal-Mart missed its profit forecast and Home Depot’s earnings dropped — could signal broader troubles in the economy.”[...]
Anxious customers of Countrywide Bank jammed its phone lines, branches and website after the nation's largest mortgage lender -- which owns the bank -- announced it was facing problems from a credit meltdown.
August 11, 2007Noting that "when liquidity dries up, the normal tools of policy lose much of their effectiveness," Paul Krugman warns of the possibility of "a chain reaction of debt defaults," as Nouriel Roubini predicts "a hard landing."
Feb 27, 2007The US is likely to enter into a recession in 2007; and even a likely and early easing of monetary policy by the Fed will not prevent such a recession as there are too many weaknesses in the US economy: a housing recession, an auto recession, a manufacturing recession, a real investment recession (as corporations are reducing real capital investment and inventories are falling), a US consumer that is on the ropes and at its tipping point; a meltdown in sub-prime mortgages that is leading to a generalized credit crunch in the economy. It is already ugly and it will get uglier in the real economy and in the financial markets. We are likely to observe a vicious cycle where a credit crunch and a persistent sell-off in equities leads to a worsening of the real economy with a hard landing (recession) that then weakens further the financial system. One cannot rule out a broader banking crisis if a deep recession occurs.
November 1999End of the Explansion: Soft Landing, Hard Landing or Even Crash?[...]
An examination of the economic tea leaves suggests three possible future paths--a soft landing, a hard landing, and a crash. A soft or hard landing is by far the more likely outcome, but, that said, it is possible to imagine conditions in which a crash will occur.
And this video featuring Peter Schiff is absolutely outstanding.
Do I need to go on? Okay, I will. But you won’t like it. Here’s Peter Schiff in February of this year.
The fiscal stimulus bill being debated in Congress not only won't help the economy, it will make the recession much worse, says Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital.Schiff scoffs at the notion the economic decline is starting to level off and concedes no government action means a "terrible" recession. But the path of increased government intervention will lead to "unmitigated disaster," says Schiff, who gained notoriety in 2007-08 for his prescient calls on the housing bubble and U.S. stocks.
The problem, he says, is the government is trying to perpetuate a "phony economy" based on borrowing and spending. With the U.S. consumer tapped out, the government is "now taking on the mantle" of consumer of last resort, he continues, predicting the bond bubble will soon burst - if it hasn't already - ultimately leading to a collapse of the dollar and an "inflationary depression worse than anything any of us have ever seen."
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
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