Word: q2
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...last October - about the time when the economy was first hitting the skids. Since then, we?ve slipped into what is all but in name a recession - even though we haven't posted the required two consecutive quarters of negative growth, the revised-downward-once-already GDP Q2 growth number of a whopping 0.17 ought to convince you of that. But unemployment numbers tend to rise most on the way out of a recession, and indeed often continue to rise as a recovery gets under...
...leafing through the report for seeds of what we can expect going forward, namely the points taken off the GDP by hand-over-fist inventory liquidation, theoretically a good and fertile development for the seasons ahead. Here'll be the really scary news: The Commerce Department reports on Q2 profits, with Merrill Lynch predicting a precipitous 16.3 percent year-one-year drop...
...That bit of dot-com nostalgia, however, pales in comparison to last week?s dose, in which JDS Uniphase, highest-flying of the tech-infrastructure high-flyers, reported that it had lost about $50 billion in Q2. As the NYT editorial page was stirred to note Sunday, that "may be the biggest loss in corporate history...
...next Fed meeting is August 21. Most investors duly noted during Alan Greenspan?s congressional testimony that Greenspan feels hope for the economy to start picking up over the next few quarters; now, in the light of the Q2 number, will be the time to contemplate just what he meant by "period of sub-par growth" and "stabilize at a lower level." If consumers retrench, that period could be very sub-par indeed; if they don?t, well, it?s not going to get much better than 0.7 for quite a while. New Fed betting is on a quarter-point...
...might as well be calling a bottom in the markets. It's not hard to do when things are this flat and analysts are forecasting an 18% year-over-year drop in Q2 results, the sharpest decline since 1991. But the real question is how long it'll stay that way. That, nobody knows, but the general feeling is it ain't gonna be over anytime soon...