Here’s an interesting piece about the shape of recessions, which come in all kind of shapes: the sharp V, the more gradual U and the double-dip W, among others.
The author sees a W, with the stimulus package making the first recession shallow, creating the illusion of a recovery. Once the stimulus wears off, the county will hit a second, deeper recession, plus having high budget deficits and inflation.
PS. I fixed the link from earlier.
This post by Eliot Spitzer make me sad he couldn’t keep his pants on when it counted.
He asks critical questions about how, why and who at the banks screwed up so badly, and what’s going with the bailout. His theme is that more sunlight in the dimly lit backrooms of Wall Street is the only thing that will restore confidence among the public.
Even now the big banks, their vaults filled with public dollars, are refusing to tell regulators how much they’re lending. They don’t feel that the rules have changed any. That tells me that the banks and Wall Street see this as just a temporary storm, that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the system and they plan to go back to what they were doing when they can.