Investor Summary Notes from John Mauldin's Front Line Thoughts Newsletter
Article Title: Time for a Reality Check
- China has seen its year-over-year exports drop by 17.5% and imports by 43%. These are not signs of a healthy economy. That being said, China is massively increasing bank loans and other stimulus-type spending to try and offset the effects of the global downturn. But putting 20 million people back to work in a short time is a daunting task
- Japanese GDP was down by 9% (!) last quarter. Many of the largest corporations are seeing exports drop by 20-30% and are engaged in massive layoffs, larger proportionally than in the US.
- Write-down by European banks in the range of 16 trillion pounds, or about $25 trillion dollars!
- The euro is going to get a lot weaker if bank problems are even half of what the report says they are. The British pound sterling is already off almost 30% and, depending on what the real damage is to their banking system, it could get worse.
Mauldin Concludes that:
..."I don’t think we know the real extent of what it is going to cost to shore up the banking system. But the consensus among the financial leadership is that we have to fix the credit system no matter what
the costs, or risk a repeat of the Great Depression. That is the essence of what Irving Fisher taught us some 75 years ago, when faced with a deflationary debt crisis."
...But the heavy lifting is going to be done by the Fed. Watch their balance sheet expand. And watch Treasury and the FDIC come back and ask for massive amounts of money to take over very large insolvent banks.
For S&P 500 Targets:
- David Rosenberg of Merrill Lynch forecasts a 20% drop from today’s close of 829
- 40% of the earnings for the S&P 500 are from outside the US. It is hard to see how those earnings are not going to be deeply affected. Let me reiterate my continued warning: this is not a market you want to buy and hold from today’s level. This is just far too precarious an economic and earnings environment
John Mauldin, Best-Selling author and recognized financial expert, is also editor of the free Thoughts From the Frontline that goes to over 1 million readers each week. For more information on John or his FREE weekly economic letter go to: http://www.frontlinethoughts.com/learnmore
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