CNBC featured a rare trifecta of deep doom and gloom interviews on July 2 from three smart and sucessful people -- Nassim Taleb, Bill Gross and Art Cashin. First, Black Swan author Nassim Taleb forecasted that the global economy is in a sort of controlled crash because of too much debt.
Then Bill Gross gave an interview where he said that U.S. consumers would be reducing their spending and increasing their savings for at least a generation, comparing their shift in habits to those of the Great Depression Generation.
Then Art Cashin chimed in and said he agreed with their theses.
In his June 25 interview on CNBC, Pimco’s Mohamed El-Erian says that CEOs are not seeing the green shoots yet.
Everyone’s predicting that consumer spending will remain sluggish for the long term.
No End In Sight for the Thrifty Consumer
The head of the International Monetary Fund strongly insists that it is too early to roll back any of the stimulus spending in the US or Europe, as the worst of the financial and economic crisis may lie ahead.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/31364629
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman argues that removing the stimulus too early would repeat mistakes made during the Great Depression and again by Japan in the 1990s.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/opinion/15krugman.html?_r=1
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