Stock Market: Season Of The Perma-Bears

(Drivebycuriosity) - It´s the season of the perma-bears again. On Marketwatch, Bloomberg, Business Insider and other media platforms you can read a lot of recession & crash calls by George Soros, hedge fund mogul Ray Dalio, doom & gloom pope Marc Faber, the economists from Societe General & Royal Bank of Scotland and more (marketwatch). They all predict doom & gloom. Peter Schiff, a "noted perma-bear" from Euro Pacific Capital, claims: "We're going to have an economic collapse and negative interest rates before the election" (businessinsider). Ridiculous!

Do these people have the magical crystal? Do they know the future? Do they have a superior knowledge of the global economy?  Certainly not. These people get a lot of attention because they are scaring the people and Business Insider & Co. are happy to spread their gloomy assertions.

Schiff and other perma-bears got their reputation - and the parish of their submissive followers & believers - because they called the crisis from 2008. Since then they are continuing to call "the coming economic disaster". The perma-bears have been wrong for 6 years and counting. Having being right once - in 2008 - makes them comparable to a clock that goes right two-times a day.

Here some examples of their failed predictions:

Peter Schiff predicted in late 2009: " I know inflation is going to get worse in 2010. Whether it’s going to run out of control or it’s going to take until 2011 or 2012, but I know we’re going to have a major currency crisis coming soon" (schiff).
Doom & Gloom pope Marc Faber said in May 2012 that there is a "100% chance of a global recession" (cnbc). He also predicted for 2014 a stock market crash that should be worse than the crash of 1987 ( cnbc).  
Albert Edwards from Societe General claimed in 2012 that "US is in a recession.. stock market is facing ice age" (newsmax).
Fund manager John Hussman, another notorious crash caller, announced in 2011 an US recession (businessinsider) and repeated his recession call in 2012 (businessinsider). In August 2013 Hussman predicted that the US stock market will crash soon (businessinsider) and he repeated his crash call in August 2014 (businessinsider).




                                               Alternate Reality


The perma-bears live in a world of their own, they seem to inhabit an alternate reality where doom & gloom rules. The US economic fundamentals are still solid (econbrowser calculatedrisk). The US labor market created 2.7 million new jobs in 2015 (December plus 292,000 cnbc), the unemployment rate is at 5.0%, weekly jobless claims are close to a 40-years low and wages are rising. Rising incomes - and sharply lower costs for gasoline, heating oil and natural gas - fuel climbing consumer spending, the engine of the economy, and the interest rates are close to zero.  China is slowing, but accomplishing its transformation process into a modern economy - thanks to the solidly growing service sector (about half of the economy) and steadily climbing retail sales.

But Schiff, Faber & Co. don`t care about the reality, they are arsonists. They try to spread doom and gloom and they try to spook the markets. If they are successful they might influence the decisions of the CEOs and hamper hiring & investing. It`s a shame that the media give them so much room.