Almunia [the EU's top economy official] said quarterly growth is unlikely to emerge until 2010, and that even then both the EU and the euro-zone will likely shrink 0.1 percent over the whole year — provided the banking sector recovers and world trade turns around.
Meanwhile, here at home everyone is crowing about the bottom being in, never a better time to buy, etc. etc. One of these predictions is going to be wrong. JP Morgan says there’s another half trillion in US bank losses coming. The IMF says another couple trillion in US mortgage losses (I guess a lot of that is held by foreign entities or non-bank investors). MegaBear Roubini’s worst-case scenario from 2007 has proven to have been a best-case scenario and wildly optimistic in retrospect.
And remember kids, this time last year we were in the “8th… maybe 9th inning of a credit crunch,” and “the bottom was in.”
Well, the bottom was in if you were underwater on your mortgage, only the bottom of the sinking US financial ship you’d been tossed off.
Tags: lies lies lies, LIES!!