MARKET TALK: It’s 1931

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

5:20 (Dow Jones) “I have been complaining for some time now that Reinhart and Rogoff think that the time is always 1931 and that we are always Austria,” Brad DeLong writes on his blog, “that the great fiscal crisis is about to erupt and send us lurching down toward Great Depression II. Well, right now guess what? The time is 1931, and we are Austria. The Federal Reserve needs to buy up every single European bond owned by every single American financial institution for cash before the increase in eurorisk leads American finance to tighten credit again and send us down into the double dip.”

(paul.vigna@dowjones.com) (http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/11/time-to-spread-foam-on-the-runway-the-federal-reserve-needs-to-act-now-to-firewall-off-the-eurocrisis.html)

I thought Mr. Market was finally coming to his senses in the third quarter, only to see him lose his mind again in October. Was that the last hurrah? The world is in too precarious a position to have equity markets rally as they did. And, we as contrarian value investors need Mr. Market to come back to reality (and perhaps get depressed again) before we can become net buyers. Today was a good day in that regard, but there is a long way to go.

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 http://www.cnbc.com/id/41969508

Even as the economy has recovered, social welfare benefits make up 35 percent of wages and salaries this year, up from 21 percent in 2000 and 10 percent in 1960, according to TrimTabs Investment Research using Bureau of Economic Analysis data.

“The U.S. economy has become alarmingly dependent on government stimulus,” said Madeline Schnapp, director of Macroeconomic Research at TrimTabs, in a note to clients. “Consumption supported by wages and salaries is a much stronger foundation for economic growth than consumption based on social welfare benefits.”

The economist gives the country two stark choices. In order to get welfare back to its pre-recession ratio of 26 percent of pay, “either wages and salaries would have to increase $2.3 trillion, or 35 percent, to $8.8 trillion, or social welfare benefits would have to decline $500 billion, or 23 percent, to $1.7 trillion,” she said.

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