The year has begun with the usual round of great economic expectations, but one writer at Bloomberg takes issue with the 'Rosie Scenario.' She says that unit sales, like plasma tvs, went up because prices went down, no real growth there. And there has not been a 'signature event' like the collapse of a major lender, to really get folks worried.
Garry Schilling in Forbes and Jim Rogers both think the economy is now in or headed for recession.
Ah, but as Harry Truman used to say, give me a one armed economist so I don't have to listen to him say, on the other hand...
And so Larry Kudlow paints a much brighter picture. The question, as Truman noted, which arm of the economist is correct? There is no end of economic statistics. And things always look great, right up to the point they don't, witness the dot.com bust which of course happened from a new high in the stock market.
I will note that this past week, oil and gold hit lows and rebounded sharply. That if reflective of what class? A weaker dollar which hit resistance at 85 versus the Euro. So what's next? What statistics or graphs would you cite to make your case for what will happen next? If you are a retailer, do you order more or less inventory? Does that depend on whether you are in a cyclical business?
My point is that there is a lot more to business than just management theory or debits and credits. Reading about business and learning some indicators to watch is a basic part of economic readiness.
So who are you reading, what indicators are you watching, OK, now, what is going to happen?
There are always gloom and doomers and there are always perpetual pollyanas, the truth is usually somewhere in between, everything does not go up or fall off the cliff at the same time.
CPAs become consultants and CFAs become analysts by learning everything there is know about an industry-retail, autos, semiconductors, whatever. What is your interest? I will mention in class today that DeLoitte is hiring more grads to become consultants. Trust me, the stuff Kudlow and Baum are discussing is the daily fabric of consulting.
DLE
PS, by the way, does anyone know who Larry Kudlow is? Bloomberg, that name sounds familiar?
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