Monthly Archives: September 2010

Wells Fargo’s Chief Macro Strategist Gary Thayer recently wrote in a September 13, 2010 article entitled “The Week” that, “…we’ve been through a lot since the 9/11 terrorist attacks” including “…two recessions, two wars, a housing boom and bust, a spike in energy prices and the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression.” While American businesses seem to have managed to handle this pretty well (Ex. after tax corporate profits are at an all time high), Thayer believes that American consumers are not as optimistic and that investor sentiment has taken an understandably big hit since 9/11.Read more

We, at Hennion & Walsh, believe the U.S. economy will continue to struggle to build any type of sustainable recovery in the face of historically high levels of unemployment, continued fears over potential sovereign defaults and political uncertainties leading into this fall's mid-term elections. Our primary concern centers on job growth. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the current U-3 unemployment rate stands at 9.6%. However, when one considers the wider encompassing U-6 unemployment rate, which counts not only people without work seeking full-time employment (the more familiar U-3 rate), but also counts marginally attached workers and those working part-time for economic reasons, of 16.5%, it begins to become very difficult to imagine a scenario where consumers will start to spend at the levels needed to build a sustainable economic recovery. Despite this, we view a double-dip recession scenario as extreme and unlikely based upon several different economic data points. Read the entire post by clicking on the title.Read more