US and Global Equities Prices would head again towards new lows

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US and Global Equities Prices would head again towards new lows says Nouriel Roubini who predicted the financial crisis in July 2006. In February this year he forecast a ``catastrophic'' meltdown that central bankers would fail to prevent, leading to the bankruptcy of large banks exposed to mortgages and a ``sharp drop'' in equities.

This is what he says so....

For a few weeks since late November equity markets ignored the onslaught of much worse than expected macro news (and all the new were really worse than awful) and had a nice 25% bear market sucker’s rally. But the drumbeat of terrible – and worse than expected - macro news and earnings news and financial news has finally taken a toll on the delusional market belief that the worst was over for financial markets and for equity markets and that the US and global economy would recover in the second half of 2009. So equity prices have already reversed more than half of their most recent bear market rally as the lousy macro news have finally shocked in the last week the wishful thinkers.

Indeed, the retail sales figures published today confirmed a shopped-out, saving-less and debt-burdened US consumer is now faltering as job losses, income losses, fall in home wealth, fall in equity wealth, high and rising debt and debt servicing ratios and a severe credit crunch take a severe toll on the ability of consumers to spend. And reduction in spending and deleveraging of the US consumer will take years to rebuild the savings rate of a household sector now hit by a severe shock to its net worth (as equity and home values fall while debts have been rising) and shocked in its ability to generate income as job losses mount and the unemployment rate surges.

US and global recession will continue at least all the way until Q4 of 2009 (a nasty 24 months U-shaped recession) and that the recovery in 2010-11 will be very weak with growth in the 1% range that is well below a potential of 2.75%. And we cannot rule out that a more severe L-shaped stag-deflation (as in Japan in the 1990s) will take hold. Indeed, as I argued recently.

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