EconoMonitor

Nouriel Roubini's Global EconoMonitor

The Rising Risk of Double-Dipping

As the debate of the shape of the recovery in the United States rages on, Nouriel Roubini analyzes the macro data and finds it to be fully consistent with – at best – a U-shaped recovery.  However, the last two weeks of poor economic data suggest that the probability of a W, a double-dip recession, is rising. The following RGE Analysis U.S. Growth Outlook: Still Anemic and U-Shaped but Risks of a Double-Dip Recession Are Rising is available only to RGE clients.

11 Responses to “The Rising Risk of Double-Dipping”

blindman double dippingMarch 4th, 2010 at 9:30 pm

@ squid brain, smartest guys in the room..double dipping.go ahead, rob the treasury again.the people and their representativeswill never even notice it. take everything.triple dip if you dare! it will be easy, likeknocking off old ladies for their pain killersand the cash under the infant of prague..double dipping. you would think a heist ofseveral trillion would be enough. all i can sayis holy sh.t. double dipping..i suspect they will have to dip enough to havesufficient finances to hire the military and assortedmercenaries for the final cleansing of the homelandof all the domestic terrorist ( the tax paying population ).non big-bankers..checks and balances. that is a good one..further rant available upon request..should we all just execute ourselves and will our estatesto j.p. morgan and goldman sachs? is that the goal, the secretaim of democracy? the meaning of life is ….. the highestknowledge and greatest attainment of man, in his most splediferousstate of attainment is ….., what we aspire to for our children’schildren is ….., the reason the prophets went to the mountains and deserts is …..to learn how to manipulate economic cycles and distributions ofassets as stores of value to fuck the retirees and workers and children , innocents, of life out of their god given humanity..do it. you deserve it for being such smug, self centered,heartless, murderous morons. special place in hell, ring a bell?.judas and his rope, my current favorite chapter..ho ho ho,.did someone say double dip? or is that a “w” revisited?or is it continual feeding at the treasury trough while molesting the skulls of those willing to sacrifice theirgray matter as shortnin’ for the sweet bread.? while doubledipping…….i would like to see the results of the study thatdifferentiates between the hungry and the well fedwith regards the number of bacteria in the gut. and howdoes this affect the cognitive processes? and the ratiosof varying species of bacterium over time compared tocognitive functioning, dirty job but someone should do it..or… : ” the more you eat, the more you shit. ” woody guthrie.and elimination energy and effort can become very “taxing” toa biologic type system..or so i have heard. actually, it was a woody guthrie impersonatori am quoting here..another thing about protein, i never here anyone exploring theidea that the human gut digests dead bacteria and thereby extracts,potentially, the nutrients from their metabolic remains. as invegans derive protein, amino acids, etc. from bacterial metabolism as well as from their dietary content. ( which is also probablylargely bacteria ) ha! somewhere in my gut i think bacteriumin the gut, gut flora, are directly linked to what some havetermed “spirits”. crazy, i know, probably true. and what ifgenetic engineering could be directed to produce strains ofdigestive bacteria that had programmable effects on the cognition and behavior of the so infected person or persons?might we be there / here now?.but what i want to say is that we have technology to protectour technology that functions to enhance and protect our technologyand we are working diligently to devise new and better technologyto improve our technology designed to protect the new, yet undeveloped, technology. but…..we no longer like the original stuff that we developed,( o.k., good, let’s admit it / face it ) technology, and can’t make the payments. ( even afford it ), yet refuse to question the necessity or efficacy of the original infrastructure. and continue to be ingenious in our defense ofits foundational significance, sacred importance. probably a front to get more on the secondary markets..but none of that matters because the “system” has devolved toa point where it resembles a well dressed tumorous squid, cancerously throbbingon the shoulder of the unconscious public, draining bacteria mealsfrom its spoiled brain through an engineered opening in theskull cap..a relatively minute group of idiots have perverted the entireprospect and concept of credit and money by gaming treasuriesand flooding markets with “counterfeit” money so obviously thesolution is to pay them off as if they are superb ball players,like the babe (ruth) who put the fannies in the seats with hisshort porch “long” shots, after all its all in the numbers!.they destroyed the system and were paid off to do it. stole itall and earned their cut. now refinanced at the expense of, well,i don’t know, civilization? humanity? reality? decency andintegrity? the clapper of the moral hazard bell is pounding andmy ears have been ringing ceaselessly for at least a year..thus was observed the political landscape in america, 2010..throbbing to maintain the squid, for its feeding needs, keepingthe victim unconscious and injecting poisons into the brain toaccelerate the predigestive decomposition. yum. all this perversion, the last gasps of a mentality that refuses to becomeconscious of itself and its impact on the environment it dominates / destroys. …here is a clue for the squid brain. when you are hungry andcome to your senses and realize you have fouled the entire globeand turned the average person into an angry and vengeful terrorist wanting nothing but extreme justice remember, think, how you arrived. how your ways have come home to face you..consciousness. historically it has been about authority havingone and perpetrating a subservient version on the “people”.the variation that was extant, naturally present among themasses being portrayed as / reflected back to their eyes asa garment / robe, a cloak to cover the nakedness of the royal,privileged, elite. politics. bullshit distractions..now we have an opportunity to see and know. we do notexist at the pleasure of authority for their support andamusement. the people never have adopted this role forthemselves or their children, we do not need experts toexplain anything. the “people” have independently observedand seen the way the world works and have articulated it.authority, as in all of history, has ignored the correctand honest analysis. now “they” have an opportunity tobecome conscious, as has been described, and avert their ownself inflicted destruction, or not. the principles are notsecrets, the laws of cause and effect, they know. the problemis they believe that there is no end to the patience of people suffering at their hands, historically common phenomena asthe perspective of the other, poor, is neglected as their numbers grow. their perspective is considered less significant thanthe demands and concerns of the day full of opportunity to amass bigger and better fortunes in a competitive field of seemingendless opportunity as decline unfolds, opportunity knocks.some one else will take care of it..in a sense it is the elite that need to comprehendthe consciousness of the people they seek to destroyor have destroyed, to save themselves. they will denyit, then foist the argument, awareness onto the other( try to indoctrinate the masses to it while avoidingit themselves ) then either accept it or destroy themselvesvia the tied / de stained hands of their potential victims..” men don’t know what the little girl understands.” j. morrison,.perhaps a different context…? but seriously .. the point …grandmothers throughout the country / world have a consciousnessthat our leaders find unattainable yet desperately need to appreciate and if nothing else at least imitate if for no otherreason than to save themselves and the lives and minds of their loved ones..but they don’t have any idea what anything, word, means inassociation with the word or concept of consciousness. frighteningyet the sun does “rise”, regardless. now that is an infrastructureand technology to die for! we could build something like that.”leadership” proof..and go figure this….Nude snow sculpture in Rahway leads police to request ‘snowlady’ cover-upBy Eliot Caroom/For the Star-LedgerMarch 03, 2010, 5:30AM.http://www.nj.com/news/local/index.ssf/2010/03/nude_snow_sculpture_in_rahway.html…“Conneran and Gonzalez said the visit from police reminded them of former Attorney General John Ashcroft’s move to drape a semi-nude statue of the Spirit of Justice when he arrived to lead the U.S. Justice Department.”…priorities people. values and priorities. we need to getsomething right. just one thing to start. the first thing!i know, give the government to the bankers! they’ll know whatto do with it, just look at their track record. and let’s letthe defense contractors take care of the diplomacy stuff!” we are the world …” and we are bacteria……but bacteria do create the finest spirits. so i guess everythingis really just fine, for now..never mind…

you guessed itMarch 4th, 2010 at 10:13 pm

and then there is this….http://www.awakeningmind.org/pages/laarticle.php.“The Historic Event of Logos: The Awakening”by Dr. Ashok K. Gangadean…”Of course, it’s hard to relate to this high–sounding metaphysics. Let us pause and catch our breath. Almost every new term in this cosmogram will need elaboration and explanation to “translate” it into more everyday language that we can digest. And in due course, we will do just that. This Vedic or Vedantic cosmology becomes much more immediately accessible through the scriptural drama of the Bhagavad Gita. In this classical script, we find a human existential situation that we can more readily enter and feel. In this epic drama, we find a great warrior, Arjuna, on a battlefield in the midst of a fratricidal war, a family divided against itself in a decisive showdown for the right to rule the kingdom. Arjuna with his brothers represents the forces of goodness and on the other side are the forces of evil. It so happens that Lord Krishna, the incarnation of the Divine Infinite Field of Aum, is the guide who will lead and counsel Arjuna through his crisis.The drama intensifies as Arjuna, seeing his relatives and kin on the other side, is pierced by his conscience and moved by compassion, and he drops his weapon and refuses to fight. He has reached a breakpoint in his life as a warrior, an existential crisis in which he finds himself split in a living contradiction. His lifelong warrior ethic and worldview entails that as a warrior, he must keep his honor and fight to win. But at this moment on the battlefield, he is moved by compassion and by the call of a higher ethic, a higher voice of conscience that tells him that he should not fight. The moral crisis has ripened. He is crushed, paralyzed on the battlefield, drops his weapon, and turns to Krishna for help.The amazing dialogue that ensues between Krishna and Arjuna follows the classic path of the awakening of higher consciousness. Krishna takes Arjuna step by step through various yoga technologies, through various disciplines of meditative awakening, into a deeper understanding of his egocentric existence and source of his existential despair. Arjuna embodies the human being who has been successful in his egocentric life but who has matured to the point where he is ready to awaken and face the emptiness and despair of the ego–condition.Arjuna’s existential breakdown on the battlefield comes precisely because he is ready to listen to his higher consciousness, to his higher Self within. So in a real sense, Arjuna is a divided “self” who at once embodies the egocentric self and the higher awakened Self that he is now ready to more fully realize. This already gives the sense that the human psyche has a dialogical structure. At this stage of his awakening, Krishna is Arjuna’s higher voice who teaches, guides, and dialogues with the entrapped egocentric psyche. The therapeutic and transformative dialogue between Arjuna and Krishna is an analogue for the inner dialogical structure of the awakening self. And later when we place this dialogical drama in the context of the global story of Logos, it will be quite evident that here, too, we find classic steps in the awakening of the global mind.At this point as we now move to the revolutionary teachings of Buddha, let’s refocus…”

blindself lets go double dippingMarch 5th, 2010 at 6:54 am

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/13804.We Can’t Afford to Be This DumbJaime O’Neill | March 31, 2008 – 9:11pm….”Maybe it’s time we tried intelligence for a change. The stupidity option doesn’t seem to have worked too well thus far. After nearly eight years of choosing stupidity as our guide, we’re utterly lost. Our economy is in ruins, our foreign policy makes no sense to us, or to anyone else, our infrastructure and our institutions are breaking down, we’re deeply in debt, our currency is losing value, our news outlets tell us less and less of what we need to know, our commentators babble on about things that really don’t matter, our schools turn out students who know little about the world, either now or in the past. Meanwhile, the crooks are robbing us blind and we are losing touch with what once made us the envy of the world.Stupidity might have seemed like an easy and attractive choice, but it’s proving far too expensive.”

blindman double dippingMarch 5th, 2010 at 7:06 am

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/26659.Globalization Is Killing The Globe: Return to Local Economiesby Thom Hartmann | February 9, 2010 – 11:19am”Globalization is killing Europe, just as it’s already wiped out much of the American middle class.Spain and Greece are facing immediate crises that many other European nations see on the near horizon: aging boomer workers are retiring with healthy benefit packages, but the younger workers who are paying for those benefits aren’t making anything close to the income (or, therefore, paying the taxes) that their parents did.Globalists/corporatists/conservative “free market” and “flat earth” advocates say this is a great opportunity to cut benefits for the old folks (and for the young folks in the future), thus bringing the countries budgets back into balance, and this story is the main corporate media storyline.But it overlooks the real issue (and the real solution): how globalization is killing these nations’ economies and what can be done about it.From the days of Adam Smith, classical economics pointed out that manufacturing and extraction are the only two ways to “create wealth.”"Wealth” is different from “income.” Wealth is value, which endures at least for some time. Income is simply compensation for work. If you wash my car for $10 and I mow your lawn for $10, we have a GDP of $20 and it looks like we both have income and economic activity. But no wealth has been created, just income. … “…”On the other hand, when a trader at Goldman Sachs makes a “profit” trading stocks, bonds, or currencies, no wealth whatsoever is created. In fact, to the extent that that trader takes millions in commissions, pay, and bonuses, he’s actually depleting the wealth of the nation (particularly to the extent that he moves his money offshore to save or invest, as many do).To use the United States as an example, in the late 1940s and early 1950s manufacturing accounted for a high of 28 percent of our total gross domestic product (and much of the rest of the economy like agriculture that, in a classical sense is “manufacturing” wasn’t even included in those numbers), and when Reagan came into office it was at a strong 20 percent. Today it’s about ten percent of our GDP.What this means is that we’re creating less wealth here, because we’re not making much anymore. (And the biggest growth in American manufacturing has been in the military sector, where goods are made that are then destroyed when they explode over foreign cities, causing even more of our wealth to vanish.)”…

blindman double dippingMarch 5th, 2010 at 7:32 am

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5651.shtml.Thinking is at a premium in AmericaBy Sean FenleyOnline Journal Guest WriterMar 5, 2010, 00:13Where’s Martin Heidegger when you need him? Well, of course, he’s six feet under, and I certainly don’t want to wish undue harm upon anyone; but it seems with each passing day, that it would really be a boon to the American public if many of our ‘leaders’ in Washington would follow him down there also. But in a time in this country when we really need deep thinking, and we don’t need the same old talking points and cookie cutter ’solutions,’ we seem to be getting more of the same old stuff.Of course, many of the Tea Baggers would like to radically decrease government, and ‘free’ up everyone to be exploited by private, ‘free’ enterprise! It seems that we’ve tried that square dance before, now haven’t we? All we need to do, say the Baggers, is to go back to disemboweling our regulatory agencies, throw hard-earned pensions and labor laws off the books, and let private enterprise and the ‘free’ market reign supreme (of course, no one seems to recall the 700 billion dollars that was ponied up to bail out some of the wealthiest private institutions in society; without Uncle Sam we’d be talking about them as part of the dustbin of history!)! You know the same old tried and tested (and failed!) formula, let tyrannical big government get out of the way so that the rapacious private sector can bring back casino capitalism (though I’m not enough of an armchair economist to know if it’s already back, Obama certainly has not implemented the appropriate regulations).But when the official left and the ‘liberals’ have no coherent and effective program at all is it really a surprise when folks flock to the Tea Bag movement for the ‘answers’? Heck, if you’ve got a nifty marketing logo, in this country, you can sell salt to a slug! So if the Tea Baggers can do it, then why shouldn’t we be able to do it also? Why don’t we sell stronger protections to workers and living wages, a guaranteed pension after a certain number of years of work, abandoning free trade policies, guaranteed vacation time (which there currently is no law on in this country, whereas in a country like Sweden six weeks is typical), health care as a right to all Americans, implementing a system of universal daycare (or at least a stipend to parents with young children at home), a decrease in the military budget, and free higher education. Of course, this is only the tip of the iceberg, and this program can be tweaked and amended, hopefully, through a democratic process.Instead of more of the same wrapped up as Ronald Reagan in a libertarian Halloween costume (complete with tea bags!), we need solutions that will raise all boats in this country, and bring more fairness, and justice to America. We don’t want more middle class killing policies that will accentuate the transition of wealth to the top in this country, let business pollute and abuse workers willy-nilly, and continue the policies that made one of the most egalitarian industrialized countries in 1970 have the greatest disparity of wealth in 2010..

blindman double dippingMarch 5th, 2010 at 7:34 am

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/8/28/pentagon_hires_rendon_group_to_profile.AMY GOODMAN: Jim Bamford, you have written a good deal about the Rendon Group. Talk about its history and the significance of what Charlie Reed has reported in Stars and Stripes.JAMES BAMFORD: The Rendon Group goes back a long way. It’s very interesting. It started out as basically just a public relations company, and then the CIA hired them to do a covert operation, basically, in the Noriega case, where they wanted Noriega out of Panama. They hired the Rendon Group to sort of pave the way. They found a person they wanted to take the place of Noriega after they ousted him, and the Rendon Group was hired to take this person who was going to the next leader of Panama and turn him into a very powerful person by helping his public relations view around the world. So that’s how it started with the Rendon Group.And then Rendon was hired after that, as he told me—his quote was, “Going back to Panama, we’ve been involved in every war except Somalia.” And he was involved in helping promote the Kuwait government during the US involvement with Kuwait in the early Gulf War.After that, then the CIA hired Rendon to do what was really extraordinary, to lead a covert operation, basically, against the Iraqi government, against Saddam Hussein. And what happened was that the CIA paid Rendon about $350,000 a month, and he would take his cut out of that, and then he’d turn it over to Ahmed Chalabi, who was head of the Iraqi National Congress. And that’s a group that Rendon actually created when he was originally sent to Iraq to help formulate this covert operation against Saddam Hussein. Rendon pulled together all the sort of disparate groups in northern Iraq that were the anti-Hussein people, pulled them together and then had a sort of a conference with all those people. And he came up with the name Iraqi National Congress. It sounded very democratic. And then he took this really charismatic character, Ahmed Chalabi, and pretty much made him the guy in charge. And throughout the 1990s, Rendon and Chalabi were pushing for the war in Iraq.Eventually, in the mid-’90s, the CIA discovered that Chalabi couldn’t be trusted. They got a good accounting of the money that was going to him and so forth, and they basically declared him a fraudster in the middle of 1990s and warned anybody else against having anything to do with him. But that really didn’t deter the Pentagon, who went on to—despite the CIA’s warning about Chalabi, went on to basically use Chalabi as their key man inside Iraq.So, that’s sort of the background of how John Rendon got into this whole world of covert operations.One of the other things he used to say quite a bit was that “I am an information warrior and a perception manager.” And that was pretty much what he tried to specialize in during most of his career and what he currently—according to the most recent reports, what he’s still doing is this perception management.

blindman double dippingMarch 5th, 2010 at 7:37 am

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5655.shtml.Is the recovery real?By Paul Craig RobertsMar 5, 2010, 00:21.”Happy news! The government has come up with a 5.9 percent GDP growth rate in the fourth quarter of 2009. The recession is over.Or is it? Statistician John Williams has informed us that 69 percent of this growth, or 4.1 percentage points, is the result of inventory accumulation. That leaves a 1.8 percent growth rate, and the 1.8 percent is likely due to the underestimate of inflation and other statistical problems.The Federal Reserve’s own monetary evidence contradicts the recovery assurances from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. The Federal Reserve continues to pour massive reserves into the banks. The monetary base, which consists of currency in circulation and bank reserves (the basis for new loans), has surged from $850 billion in 2009 to $2.2 trillion on February 24.Despite this potential for massive new money creation, the broadest measure of money growth is still contracting. The banks are too impaired and so are consumers for the banks to create new money by making loans.The economy, in other words, is going nowhere…”

MorbidMarch 5th, 2010 at 9:38 am

Yes, this is very much to the “quantum leap” in consciousness this planet sorely needs. Certainly the Logos worldview becomes altered by such an event – but it comes from a connection to Eros-ego consciousness – by entering the so-called black head of Osiris; quieting the mind and observe the inner images which will show one how to live. You can begin this journey by exploring the following,http://www.psychovision.ch/rfr/roth_e.htmIt's a Buddha – Take II. Also see Jung’s seminar on Kundalini Yoga. It’s Avatar stage time or reaching the 5th chakra – psychic awareness and that one does not live alone in the inner house. There is another voice wanting to make input.

Most Read | Featured | Popular

Blogger Spotlight

Ed Dolan Ed Dolan's Econ Blog

Edwin G. Dolan is an economist and educator with a Ph.D. from Yale University. Early in his career, he was a member of the economics faculty at Dartmouth College, the University of Chicago, and George Mason University. From 1990 to 2001, he taught in Moscow, Russia, where he and his wife founded the American Institute of Business and Economics (AIBEc), an independent, not-for-profit MBA program. Since 2001, he has taught at several universities in Europe, including Central European University in Budapest, the University of Economics in Prague, and the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, where he has an ongoing annual visiting appointment. During breaks in his teaching career, he worked in Washington, D.C. as an economist for the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice and as a regulatory analyst for the Interstate Commerce Commission, and later served a stint in Almaty as an adviser to the National Bank of Kazakhstan. When not lecturing abroad, he makes his home in San Juan Islands, Washington.

Economics Blog Aggregator

Our favorite economics blogs aggregated.