Fed Chair Ben Bernanke stated last night that he is 'hopeful' the U.S. economy will not fall into a double dip recession. After a tremendous drubbing on Friday, stocks somehow managed to sell down to even lower levels yesterday. They are down again this morning following Bernanke’s comments - a fitting response to his forecasting acumen.
Few people in the United States seem to be as oblivious to the condition of the American economy as is the guy who is in charge of the Federal Reserve. Bernanke notoriously stated that subprime borrowing wouldn't cause any problems only weeks before it blew up into the biggest financial crisis the world has ever seen. Following this, the Fed released a number of statements in the spring of 2008 about how it was hopeful that its policies would prevent the U.S. economy from falling into a recession. Unfortunately, the economy had already fallen into recession months before, but the Fed was blissfully unaware of this even though it has more access to economic data than anyone else. The buffoonish Bernanke has been beating the drum of economic recovery for a long time now, even though analysis of U.S. statistics indicates the private sector is still struggling. The only recovery that seems to have taken place is in increased government spending.
At the moment, the markets don't seem to share Bernanke's rosy view of the future. The Dow (NYSEArca: DIA) dropped 115 points (1.2%) yesterday and most of the selling took place around the close, as is typical in bear markets. The Dow's ending price of 9816 was well below the key 10,000 level. The S&P 500 (NYSEArca: SPY) fell 14 points (1.4%) and closed at a new low for 2010, as did the Dow. Selling was even more pronounced in the tech heavy Nasdaq and the small cap Russell 2000 (NYSEArca: IWM). The Nasdaq (NasdaqGM: ONEQ) lost 45 points (2.0%) and the Russell 15 points (2.4%). As of today, the Dow and S&P 500 have spent 13 trading days below their simple 200-day moving averages, a bearish pattern. Selling was also widespread with market breadth close to three to one negative on the NYSE.
The only areas of the market that did well yesterday were utilities (NYSEArca: XLU), gold (NYSEArca: GLD), gold miners (NYSEArca: GDX), and treasuries (NYSEArca: TLT) - all safe havens. Financials (NYSEArca: XLF) were hit hard with Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) falling 2.5% and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) losing 3.4%. U.S. bank failures have reached 81 so far this year and look like they are going to handily exceed 2009's very high figure. Credit card debt has fallen for 19 months in a row and May's employment report indicated private sector hiring has disappeared. Once the 1.2 million temporary Census workers are dismissed, the U.S. unemployment rate should go above 10%. These are not signs of economic recovery and yet the Fed chair keeps spouting one cheerleading remark after another about how recovery is taking place. Herbert Hoover did the same thing in the early 1930s as the Great Depression was developing. Consequently, he is now treated as a historical laughingstock. History may take the same view of Ben Bernanke.
Disclosure: None
Daryl Montgomery
Organizer, New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21 |
