We have had conversations lately with family and friends in which we referenced the nature of economic and geopolitical news that we have been reporting on since we began this blog 6 months ago. It has been unmitigatedly bad.
What does appear as ‘good’ news is often a temporary reversal in some negative trend. The US price of gasoline recently dropped 10 or 20 cents. That belies the fact that it is still at nosebleed levels and that the price of oil, and therefore gasoline, is headed higher this year – even without a Mideast war (and we barely cover geopolitics).
We recently saw some housing stat about an increase in building permits or sales or something. But then we read an article such as Foreclosure Inventory = 103 months (that’s 8.6 years of overhang. How do prices and how does the home construction industry recover with a situation such as this?). Most of this stuff we simply don’t comment on or report.
We do report the major trends. We track with specific and regularly updated posts, recessions, ratings downgrades and the major events in countries that are blowing up like Spain and Japan (Greece we don’t even bother with in its zombie state). The point politicos and economists alike seem to fail to grasp or certainly voice, is that until we admit we have a serious problem and embrace the pain any solution will require, we cannot move towards a brighter future. So things continue to worsen.
Indeed, the single piece of good news that we could recall was the upgrade of Iceland. The real irony here of course is that Iceland, the first country to default in the current (since 2007) crisis, defied the dictates of the EU, and the governments of the UK and the Netherlands (and their own government!) through a referendum of the people. They gave the middle finger to the collective wisdom of the ruling elites and the their economists and are now doing quite well thank you.
Here’s their genuinely good news story.