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Well it could be indicative of a crisis fomenting overseas. The two obvious trouble spots are China and Europe. The Chinese have questionable economic statistic

Well it could be indicative of a crisis fomenting overseas. The two obvious trouble spots are China and Europe. The Chinese have questionable economic statistics (gathering accurate statistics was never easy to begin with), and who knows what's happening in Europe. One way to get a gauge on things is to measure the inputs, i.e. consumption. The billion dollar question for those of us living in the U.S. is, if there is a problem, will it spread?

jayess 11y ago
Brazil is running into big problems too: http://www.businessinsider.com/brazil-indicators-look-like-2008-2015-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/brazil-indicators-look-like-2...
cryoshon 11y ago
Consumption is still pretty weak in the US as a result of late-capitalism income inequality-- in my opinion, the US will continue with the gradual stagnation we've seen since the crash. This stagnation has been going on for years now, and it constitutes a serious crisis of its own, but the sky isn't falling like in 2008. Until there's another crash, that is. Then, there will be another "recovery" with another large slice of the wealth going to the oligarchs. My completely uneducated and totally invented prognostication for this crash is mid Q4 2015 or early Q1 2016. The biggest indications that a crash is coming are the record high stock values we've seen recently. Relatedly, the SV bubble is going to pop when investors realize that there isn't really that much "disruptiveness" in a lot of the software startups they've been funding. China's consumption is strong as a result of it being in early to middle stage capitalism, which drastically reduces income inequality, which takes the form of a new middle class(perhaps temporarily). The problem with China involves their middle class's population-level involvement with the stock market. Everyone and their mom is invested into the market, meaning that the commoners are currently losing vast amounts of wealth as a result of the implosion. Whether this ultimately will hurt consumption isn't clear. Europe might be okay in the medium or long term, but a small crisis is already playing out right now. Greece, while somewhat ameliorated by recent talks, is still a ticking time bomb. An interesting third case is Japan, which is now having its second "lost generation" in a row as a result of long-term stagnation and demographic issues. Japan is a neglected back-door to the world economy. The coming months could be a much-delayed ultimate collapse or resurgence from the sleeping economic giant, though after decades of horizontal movement it's hard to envision what either would look like. Interesting times ahead.
- merpnderp 11y ago
  s/late-capitalism/crony-corporatism/ We don't have capitalism, we have the joining of government and corporations and they are becoming ever more entwined.
  - jayess 11y ago
    a/k/a fascism
  - cryoshon 11y ago
    Yeah, but I have to water down the language or else there will be idiots crawling out of the woodwork. People get all ornery when you call it fascism.
    - SovietDissident 11y ago
      Don't mean to ride you on this point, but proper terms are very important. You can call it corporatism if you think fascism conjures up a black-and-white image of Il Duce, but calling it capitalism sets us back in terms of actually understanding the causes of our current crises, and hampers the already Sisyphean task of teaching people what capitalism actually means: a politico-economic system of laissez-faire and the protection of individual rights. So, this is not a product of "late-capitalism income inequality"; it is a product of central banking in the U.S. and around the world, and their artificial tinkering with interest rates/the money supply for political expediency.
      - CuriousSkeptic 11y ago
        Isn't the fundamental piece of capitalism privately owned capital? What would we call a system of lasses-fair and protection of individual rights where those rights only included the right to rent capital from the state (not own it).
      - jazzyk 11y ago
        I believe the proper term is statism, no? Collusion of big business and the state.
jwp729 11y ago
It could also be indicative of future market moves in other markets too, even if these moves are not crises. The large moves in commodities has been anomalously _uncorrelated_ with equity markets, though historically over long enough windows the two move together. This raises the question of whether this trend has broken or if one (commodities markets or equities) will budge in the direction of the other soon. My crystal ball is too smudgy to know this myself...

jayess 11y ago

Brazil is running into big problems too: http://www.businessinsider.com/brazil-indicators-look-like-2008-2015-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/brazil-indicators-look-like-2...

cryoshon 11y ago

Consumption is still pretty weak in the US as a result of late-capitalism income inequality-- in my opinion, the US will continue with the gradual stagnation we've seen since the crash. This stagnation has been going on for years now, and it constitutes a serious crisis of its own, but the sky isn't falling like in 2008. Until there's another crash, that is. Then, there will be another "recovery" with another large slice of the wealth going to the oligarchs. My completely uneducated and totally invented prognostication for this crash is mid Q4 2015 or early Q1 2016. The biggest indications that a crash is coming are the record high stock values we've seen recently. Relatedly, the SV bubble is going to pop when investors realize that there isn't really that much "disruptiveness" in a lot of the software startups they've been funding. China's consumption is strong as a result of it being in early to middle stage capitalism, which drastically reduces income inequality, which takes the form of a new middle class(perhaps temporarily). The problem with China involves their middle class's population-level involvement with the stock market. Everyone and their mom is invested into the market, meaning that the commoners are currently losing vast amounts of wealth as a result of the implosion. Whether this ultimately will hurt consumption isn't clear. Europe might be okay in the medium or long term, but a small crisis is already playing out right now. Greece, while somewhat ameliorated by recent talks, is still a ticking time bomb. An interesting third case is Japan, which is now having its second "lost generation" in a row as a result of long-term stagnation and demographic issues. Japan is a neglected back-door to the world economy. The coming months could be a much-delayed ultimate collapse or resurgence from the sleeping economic giant, though after decades of horizontal movement it's hard to envision what either would look like. Interesting times ahead.

merpnderp 11y ago
s/late-capitalism/crony-corporatism/ We don't have capitalism, we have the joining of government and corporations and they are becoming ever more entwined.
- jayess 11y ago
  a/k/a fascism
- cryoshon 11y ago
  Yeah, but I have to water down the language or else there will be idiots crawling out of the woodwork. People get all ornery when you call it fascism.
  - SovietDissident 11y ago
    Don't mean to ride you on this point, but proper terms are very important. You can call it corporatism if you think fascism conjures up a black-and-white image of Il Duce, but calling it capitalism sets us back in terms of actually understanding the causes of our current crises, and hampers the already Sisyphean task of teaching people what capitalism actually means: a politico-economic system of laissez-faire and the protection of individual rights. So, this is not a product of "late-capitalism income inequality"; it is a product of central banking in the U.S. and around the world, and their artificial tinkering with interest rates/the money supply for political expediency.
    - CuriousSkeptic 11y ago
      Isn't the fundamental piece of capitalism privately owned capital? What would we call a system of lasses-fair and protection of individual rights where those rights only included the right to rent capital from the state (not own it).
    - jazzyk 11y ago
      I believe the proper term is statism, no? Collusion of big business and the state.

jwp729 11y ago

It could also be indicative of future market moves in other markets too, even if these moves are not crises. The large moves in commodities has been anomalously _uncorrelated_ with equity markets, though historically over long enough windows the two move together. This raises the question of whether this trend has broken or if one (commodities markets or equities) will budge in the direction of the other soon. My crystal ball is too smudgy to know this myself...