http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8135203.stm

The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest, and started catching them. The man bought thousands at $10 and as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort. He further announced that he would now buy at $20. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.

Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms. The offer increased to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so little that it was an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catch it!

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on behalf of him.

In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers. “Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.”

The villagers rounded up with all their savings and bought all the monkeys.

Then they never saw the man nor his assistant, only monkeys everywhere!

Now you have a better understanding of how the stock market works.

Franky thought this was related to on-campus dress codes.

Speaking of codes I guess Government Sachs lost their market manipulation playbook the other day….

All that looks right. My company is seriously hunkered down expecting seriously bad times through at least the end of 2010, if not further out. And we depend on sales in Asia, Latin American, and Europe as much as North America. If we were as cheerfully optimistic as f411 going into the 2001 and early 1990s recessions (or even during the late 1990s boom), we would have been dead a long time ago.

“But I suppose if you don’t have any skin in the game …”

You know the old saying that it’s a recession when you lose your job, and it’s a depression when I lose my job. F411 hasn’t lost his job yet.

“We’re nearing 50 on the index, which means we’re on the cusp of growth if this trend continues. And the trend is up, not down.”

Being on the “cusp of growth” is not the same thing as growing. Degrading at a slower rate is not the same as improving. Repeat, DEGRADING AT A SLOWER RATE IS NOT THE SAME AS IMPROVING.

When you approach an inflection point, things can either continue along the path that would be indicative of a constant (or at least positive) second derivative, or the second derivative can diminish and reverse polarity. It is not knowable from the past which course the future will take. It is just as possible for things to continue degrading at a slower rate, until the rate of degradation flattens at zero, and then rolls over, sending the trend back down.

Chartology, especially in a realm where the data is always noisy, is rarely a place to anchor your hopes and dreams, and never a fulcrum to base your projections on. At best, it’s an indicator of the future — but on an indicator, and a fickle one at best. One always has to be prepared for things to go the other way.

But I suppose if you don’t have any skin in the game, this is all just debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

I gotta get back into the moment — or is it that I gotta get the moment back into me?

Actually, @ 11:16 you said it was I, not others, mischaracterizing your record. (I’ll save everyone the tedium of pasting your text, but invite you to scroll up, to look at what you said; you stated it was I who was mischaracterizing your record.) Now, you’re saying it wasn’t me, but apparently unnamed Others, or perhaps Some (two of the most popular straw men specie extant).

So, to recap, you’re calling for a tough jobs market and tepid growth – lasting up to several years. I submit to you that that is the main sense of TBP posters, too. Like any (free) internet forum, though, there will be a diversity of opinions and some extreme views no matter what the subject.

Again, I’m asking to demonstrate your variant view, and you’ve not. You’re safely in the mainstream of thought here with your economic calls.

Do you think it otherwise?

Nobody here as ever said anything remotely like that. You consistently mis-characterize the bearish case, I guess because it’s easier to fight a straw man.