Did I write “depression”. I dont see it. But I do think we have tremendous amounts of supply over-hang right now. Cars, Houses, shipping capacity, products from China, etc…supply destruction is way behind demand destruction. And, I think it is a “panic” that’s how these things start. But the panic is brought on by the reality of the numbers being way off predictions. Then comes the confirmation of demand destruction and the further re-adjusting of the earnings, etc…when demand keeps dwindling down. People repair cars and dont buy new ones. Keep renting a house and not buying, etc….With lay-offs ramping up and unemployement already hitting very high numbers, this trend will have legs for at least another year. When peoples livelyhoods are threatened, they go into “bunker” mode. And that’s starting to happen. Savings has started to tick-up for the first time in 15 or 20 years.
If you examine the historical mortgage interest rate charts, I think you’ll see that the rates were indeed lowest at the nadir of the last two recessions. 1993 and the end of 2002. And they were climbing in the time periods leading up to these periods. Perhaps I’m not seeing it the way you are? Not sure. Also, data from the great depression indicates that personal loan rates were very cheap in 1932 and 33. Corporate borrowing was expensive as they kept defaulting and had very sketchy collateral back-up.
A further note: If you agree that the stock market portends the functioning economy, then this latest set of drops in 2008 suggest that we are at the begining of a strong contractionary period. And they tend to run from 2 to 3 years these days. I think, if we’re lucky, we’ll get the usual this time around. But this looks like world failure to me. Every major industry in the US is in peril and housing accross the country getting hammered. This looks global and bad, when’s the last time we could say this? The hard contractions were usually sectored to specific areas, industries or countries in the recent past. Keep in mind that from 2002 to 2007 saw every asset class rise substantially in price. When was the last time that happened? Food for thought.
