2009

Thank you to The Penny Daily for including this article as its “Editor’s Pick” in Carnival of Everything Money #5.

We set out to see what the experts are saying about 2009.  What we didn’t realize was how the art of providing financial outlook has become a game of “one down-manship.“  How else would you explain the boom in competition for the title of Dr Doom?

So it would seem that the Rapture is upon us, are you ready?  Yeah, we feel the same way.

Here’s our survey of what some of the bigwigs in the investment industry have said about 2009 in recent months.  In our mock* roster, we have Warren Buffet the sage; Nouriel Roubini aka Dr Boom/perma-bear, or our favourite, the playboy Professor; Nassim Taleb aka Black Swan; Peter Schiff who’s-laughing-now; Jim Rogers my-kids-speak-Chinese-and-that-is-my-investment-hedge; Marc Faber the original-Dr-Doom; Don Coxe via Basic Points; and John Embry the Canadian goldbug.

Outlook for 2009

Investoralist: So how bad is 2009 looking?  Don’t hold back now, give it to us straight-up!

Warren Buffet: We have lived in one way in one type of economy. And we’re now deleveraging that economy. We’re gonna have to live without the same impetus from credit expansion that really helped propel the economic engine for a long period of time. That wind will not be at our back.

The economy will be in shambles throughout 2009, and, for that matter, probably well beyond, but that conclusion does not tell us whether the stock market will rise or fall.

Nouriel Roubini: The worst is yet to come.  I don’t want to name names, but many [banks], given the housing bust, will become insolvent. Their losses are mounting because they have written down only their subprime loans so far. They haven’t started writing down most of their consumer-credit losses, and reserves for losses are much less than they should have been. The banks are playing all sorts of accounting gimmicks not to recognize them. There are hundreds of millions of dollars outstanding in home-equity loans that eventually could be worth zero, too.

Nassim Taleb: The problems are still here. People that were in charge, they are still around. The bankers that got us here are still around. And we’re giving them more money. It’s not a regular crisis, the whole system need to be changed. We need to reduce debt. We need to reduce asymmetric pay-offs of the banks. This is just the beginning, we need to de-leverage so massively.

Peter Schiff: I wouldn’t get to enthusiastic about it. I think the lows are not in for the Dow, if you measure Dow in terms of ounces of gold, then US stocks are headed for a lot lower in 2009. Ultimately, everything that Obama is proposing is destructive to our economy.