A Global Bear Market

Posted by Marc Faber Comment by Richard Russell

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Marc Faber: “I’m convinced that Europe is actually in recession today … There is a meaningful and more substantial slowdown in China than the official statistics would suggest. At the present time there probably is hardly any growth at all, so that slows down the demand for industrial commodities. That then slows down the production in countries that produce industrial commodities. So you have essentially a chain, a vicious spiral going through the global economy, which means that corporate profits in the U.S. … will disappoint” – in Fox Business News

recession

Richard Russell: That bear market signal in early May — did it work or was something else going on? From its April low, the Dow has rallied back strongly, and I’ve been wondering, “Is something else going on, something more ominous than simply a bear signal for the economy and stocks in the United States?

Then I read a paragraph in the latest issue of The Week, and that paragraph got me thinking. Here, I’ll reproduce that paragraph below, just as it appeared in the magazine, The Week.

ECONOMY — New Fears of a Global Slowdown.
The US, Europe and China all appear to be slipping into an economic slowdown together, said Hilsenrath and Mitchell in The Wall Street Journal. Last week, new data showed that American businesses are scaling back planned orders for durable goods like computers, aircraft, and machinery, while in Europe, concerns about the Continent’s ongoing fiscal problems are sapping business confidence. China’s factories registered their seventh straight month of declining activity, and emerging economies like India, South Africa and Brazil are reporting new signs of weakness. Economic activity appears to be slowing around the globe. Europe’s troubles remain the biggest single threat in the global economy, said Don Lee and Henry Chu in the LA Times, but lackluster US growth and inflation concerns in developing economies also pose serious risks. As a result, economists expect global growth to slow sharply this year, with world trade rising at just half of last year’s pace. Countries like Brazil and India won’t be able to pick up the slack, since their economies are smarting from Europe’s dwindling demand for goods. And analysts worry that China, now growing at its slowest rate in 13 years, could be heading for a hard landing “that would ricochet around the world.”

Richard Russell: I read the above paragraph three or four times, and I wondered, “Could the May bear signal have even more significance than I imagined at the time? Was it a signal for a global contraction or depression?

 

 

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