Richard Suttmeier says, “Forget the Double-Dip,” We Won’t Kick the Recession Until We Start Creating Jobs”

The stock market continued its sell-off Thursday as investors await Friday’s June unemployment report. The consensus estimate among economists is for a loss of at least 100,000 jobs and the unemployment rate to inch up to 9.8%.The jobs data we have already received this week also doesn’t suggest positive news. This week’s initial jobless claims were worse than expected, growing by 13,000 to 472,000. The four-week moving average is now 466,500. That’s well above normal levels, even during a recession. “350,00 is the recessionary threshold,” says ValuEngine.com’s Richard Suttmeier.The private sector is still not creating enough jobs to make a dent. Wednesday’s ADP report counted a disappointing 13,000 new jobs in the private sector in June. Remember, the government’s data only showed 41,000 new private sector jobs in May.The poor job market is proof the economy remains in a prolonged recession, says Suttmeier, noting that in December 2007, when the recession began, the unemployment rate was below 5%. “Forget the double dip, we’re not out of the first dip, based on that statistic alone.”There is one shred of silver lining, at least when it comes to stocks, Suttmeier tells Aaron in this clip. “The market reaction to the negative side has already occurred this week, so you may get a relief rally,” even if the jobs data is weak.

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Gary Shilling’s Bearishness Doesn’t Seem Nutty

The recession will now turn deeper and the Federal Reserve is worried about deflation.

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Gary Shilling says, House Prices Still Have Another 10%- 20% To Fall

A year ago, house prices finally stopped collapsing after two years of brutal declines. Over the following few quarters, moreover, they actually rose. This led many observers to conclude that the housing bottom had been reached and that we were headed for a v-shaped bounce.Not Gary Shilling.Gary Shilling, head of economic research firm A. Gary Shilling & Co., thinks house prices still have another 10%-20% to fall. Just as bad, Gary thinks this fall will happen over the next three years, meaning that house prices won’t bottom until 2013. Most people think prices have already bottomed, or will bottom later this year or next.Why is Gary so bearish?Supply versus demand.Basically, Gary says, we still have way too many houses relative to the number of people who want to buy them. Consumers are under pressure, overloaded with debts and struggling to find work, and the mass-hallucination that investing in housing was a “sure thing” is now a distant memory. These days, many would-be home buyers are moving in with relatives or downsizing or dumping second homes. And the supply-demand balance is so out of whack, in Gary’s view, that even super-low interest rates won’t keep prices afloat.

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Robert Prechter sees “The Biggest Bubble in History”

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Delinquent Mortgages Hit Record 15%

• The percentage of loans that were in foreclosure or behind at least one payment hit 15.02%, the most since MBA’s records began in 1972.   Foreclosures will likely stay high in 2010.
• Real estate Web site Zillow.com recently said one in five homeowners were underwater in Q4!!
• 4.5 million foreclosure filings are expected this year, up from 2.8 million in 2009.
• “The bulk of foreclosures are coming in spring and summer, and we do expect home prices to continue falling through the end of this year,” said Celia Chen, director of housing economics at Moody’s Economy.com.

The Stock Market Crash Of 2008

CNN Money

The Economy

How Did We Get Here?

By now you likely know that the crisis in the financial markets is the culmination of years of reckless mortgage lending and Wall Street dealmaking. It’s the final gasp of the burst housing bubble. But how exactly did this happen?

To find the root cause of Wall Street’s woes, you have to go back to the collapse of a different bubble – tech. In 2001, after the dotcom craze ended and the bear market began, the Federal Reserve started aggressively slashing short-term interest rates to stave off recession. By eventually reducing rates to a historically low 1%, the Fed reinflated the economy. But this cheap money sparked a new wave of risk taking.

Homeowners, armed with easy credit, snapped up properties as if they were playing Monopoly. As prices soared, buyers were able to afford ever-larger properties only by taking out risky mortgages that lenders were happily approving with little documentation or money down.

At the same time, Wall Street investment banks got a brilliant idea: bundle the riskiest of these mortgages, then slice and dice these portfolios into tradable bonds to be sold to other banks and investors. Amazingly, bond-rating agencies slapped their highest ratings on the “best” of this debt.

This house of cards came down when subprime borrowers began defaulting on their mortgages. That sent housing prices tumbling, unleashing a domino effect on mortgage-backed securities. Banks and brokerages that had borrowed money to boost the impact of those investments had to race to raise capital.

Some, like Merrill Lynch, were forced to sell. Others, like Lehman Brothers, weren’t so lucky. “What we always tell investors is beware of too much leverage in a company,” says Brian Rogers, chairman and portfolio manager for T. Rowe Price. “Leverage is the enemy of the investor.”

Sure, everyone from former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan to your friends and neighbors played a role in stoking this casino culture. But troubled banks and brokerages can’t pass the blame. “These firms closed their eyes and made very bad bets on risky securities that they didn’t truly understand,” says Jeremy Siegel, finance professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school. “Investments that they did not have to make led to their demise.”