Money and Finance
Hussman Funds 2012 Annual Report
In recent months, our measures of leading economic pressures have indicated the likelihood of an oncoming U.S. recession. Our view is based on the analysis of leading/coincident/lagging indicators, as well as more statistical methods that extract “unobserved components” from a broad range of economic indicators. The weakness developing in the most leading components of U.S. data closely reflects accelerating weakness in European data. European output continues in its steepest contraction since 2009.
In my view, the repeated monetary interventions of recent years have been an attempt to contain the unfinished effect of the 2008-2009 economic downturn. I believe that the global economy is moving into another recession because policymakers have not effectively addressed the debt problems that produced the first one, leaving the economy unusually vulnerable to aftershocks.
To understand where we are, it is helpful to understand how we got here.
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Hussman Weekly Market Comment: Roach Motel Monetary Policy
Strong leading indicators such as the CFNAI and the Philly Fed Index have been weak for many months, and the deterioration in new orders has moved from a slowing of growth to outright contraction in recent months. In the order of events, a slowing in...
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Hussman Weekly Market Comment: How To Build A Time Machine
With industrial production, capacity utilization, real disposable income, real personal consumption, real sales retail and food service sales, and real manufacturing and trade sales uniformly declining in their latest reports, coincident economic indicators...
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Hussman Weekly Market Comment: Have We Avoided A Recession?
In our view, it is very difficult to obtain useful views about economic direction using the standard "flow of anecdotes" approach that is the bread-and-butter of many analysts. The economic data reported daily are a mix of leading, coincident and lagging...
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Hussman Weekly Market Comment: Europe: Just Getting Warmed Up
Last week, the financial markets mounted a striking shift back to the "risk-on" trade, as investor concerns about a recession were abandoned, and Wall Street came to believe that Europe will easily contain its banking problems. Accordingly, downside protection...
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Hussman Weekly Market Comment: Recession, Restructuring, And The Ring Fence
In recent months, our recession models have forcefully shifted to warning of oncoming recession. Our initial concern in August was based on a fairly compact set of indicators that we track as a Recession Warning Composite (see Recession Warning, and The...
Money and Finance