GDPhursday – Death by a Thousand Cuts?

That’s the word this morning from Societe Generale, who titled their Global Earnings Estimates Analysis: "Death by a thousand cuts; double digit downgrades for Eurozone and Japan" and included this spiffy graph to make the point that we are now about to cross back into the negative earnings zone that has, in the past, been a great indicator that we were about to have a HORRIFIC market correction.  

Per Barry Ritholtz, the "highlights" of the report were:  

• Recent earnings forecasts cut by 4.9% and 6.9% for 2011 and 2012, respectively. • Severe downgrading of both 2011 and 2012 consensus forecasts, with Japan and the Eurozone seeing double-digit percentage cuts to next year’s earnings; • US stands out with only minor cuts to 2012 forecasts.

Note that on an ex-financial basis, US 2012 forecasts have seen just a 2% cut, which SocGen describes as “hardly consistent with a recessionary or low growth outlook.”  So either we will miss a recession in the US, or analysts are too optimistic.  We have our own Q3 GDP report at 8:30 and that will help give us a clue but I stand by my assertion that, without QE3 – we simply do not have the gas to break away from this downward trend.  On the other hand, my bullish premise (and we’re still long-term bullish) is that this is both obvious and inevitable as the alternative is simply unacceptable.

Of course, the EU has just given us a fabulous road map for the next round of QE and they have flooded the World with enough freshly printed Euros that it would hardly make a ripple now if the Fed drops a Trillion here or there in 2012.  Not to be outdone, the Swiss have been considering PAYING Banksters to borrow money and the Government actually voted yesterday (defeated so far) on creating a legal framework for negative interest rates.  

THAT’s how crazy things are getting and THAT’s what happens when Banksters run a country – a fate the United States is itself in the early stages of.  When the primary purpose of the Government (and that’s YOUR elected officials spending YOUR money) becomes finding bigger and better ways to give money (that they don’t have) to Banks – THE SYSTEM IS BROKEN!  Really, what does it take to wake you people up???

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