Joshua Brown sieht schwarze Wolken am Konjunkturhimmel:
The veil between recovery and recession has never been thinner and all the old ghosts of the past have returned to haunt us once again, some of them almost exact replicas of their prior incarnations. Witness:
Rumors of hedge funds blowing up run rampant through the tape.
Bankruptcy talk for storied franchises like American Airlines and Eastman Kodak now litters the headline ticker.
Confidence is at all-time lows. We've not been this despondent about our leadership and forward-track in all of our recorded history as a society - the Civil War era and Great Depression included.
The certainty of higher taxes is also now taking hold, from the middle class on up. We know it's coming no matter who is elected, it's only a matter of timing and degree.
[...]
And of course Europe is the very spookiest of ghosts dancing 'round the harvest bonfire this season. Playing the role of the Ghost of Lehman this Halloween is the EU Fiscal Union and what's left of the ECB as a credible institution. In hindsight, it's a miracle that something like this was ever even attempted let alone allowed to persist for so long. Picture the self-satisfaction of the French, backed by the sweat-equity of the German efficiency empire, supporting an epic Mediterranean talent for deception and then topped off with a creme fraiche of Continental haughtiness - then you get to the heart of why this mess is so un-clean-up-able. The monetary-union-that-wasn't is a combination of all the worst traits of each of its member states, a 10-car pileup of cultural flaws just begging to be toppled so that the BMW at the bottom of the pack can drive away from the Peugeots and the Fiats with only minor scrapes and scratches.
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