It Looks Like a Recession Because It Is One – Ep. 132

* The bear market in global stocks continues, and I believe we're in a bear market in the U.S.
* Technically the major averages are not quite down 20%, although some of the averages are
* Transports were down 30% from their highs
* The Russell 2000 was down more than 25%
* Many individual sectors are way down into bear market territory, as are some individual stocks
* IBM hit a new 6-year low; and, of course, IBM is the poster boy for share buy-backs
* Imagine how much shareholder money has been flushed down the toilet buying back stock at over $200/sh and now we're looking at 12o and falling
* But remember: all bear markets begin as corrections
* The bear market of 2001, when the S&P was cut in half, and the NASDAQ fell by 80%, started as a correction
* The same thing in 2008 - they were calling that a correction, too, until they realized that it was a bear market
* In fact, the main thing I am hearing today is the comeback - the Dow had a huge comeback because it was down more than 560 points at the low and it closed down at just 249
* The NASDAQ was down more than 160 and it closed down only 5
* Had we closed at the lows of the day maybe we would be closer to a short-term bottom
* This is another short-covering inter-day rally creating a slippery slope of hope for the market to continue to slide down
* Today, we have hit the most 52-week lows in any month since September of 2008
* Earlier in the day, we were showing the biggest monthly point drop in the history of the stock market
* It's not just the worst January, it's the worst month of any year, ever
* The market has got to be telling us that not only are we in a bear market, but we are in a recession
* The market is forward-looking: it is telling us that we are in a recession
* The bond market is priced as if we are in a recession
* Maybe that is because we are in a recession
* All the economic data indicates a severe recession
* The market is behaving as though something bad is happening - we haven't seen action like this since 2008, yet people are dismissing all of this evidence
* If it walks like a recession, quacks like a recession, smells like a recession, it is a recession
* There are now more people acknowledging that the Fed should not continue raising rates in the near future - an article in the Guardian says:"Janet Yellen and Fed left with face full of egg after interest rate rise blunder" accuses the Fed of raising rates too early
* The problem isn't that they raised rates early, it is that they raised them too late
* Actually the real problem is that they never should have lowered rates to zero in the first place
* I said this from the beginning: They sealed their fate as soon as they dropped rates to zero - no matter when they raised rates it would be a disaster, and the longer they waited it would be a disaster
* What is ridiculous is that the Fed wants us to believe that they can raise rates, after leaving them at zero for so long, and that we could sometime just be fine
* The narrative that Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen and the Obama administration have been selling is that they saved the economy
* The economy is in much worse shape now than it was 7 years ago
* Instead the Fed's poisonous cure made us sicker than ever - That is what I wrote in "Crash Proof"
* When I forecasted the bursting of the real estate bubble and the Great Recession and financial crisis, I said the economy could withstand that
* What would kill it was the Fed's cure, they came up with the exact remedy I was afraid they would and it is having this exact effect
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