The American Spectator

Since 9/11, a pall of pessimism has covered the U.S. Polls show that between 60 and 85 percent of Americans have believed that the U.S. is in a recession or would go into one the following year. But from September 2001 through August 2008, those polls were wrong.

Nonetheless, the failure of Lehman Brothers, with its ripple affect on money market accounts and confidence in the U.S. banking system, finally made this prognostication a reality. The U.S. entered a real recession in September. Rather than a prolonged recession, however, or one that is worsening, we’re seeing a temporary “V” shaped recession caused by a sharp, fear-driven slowdown in the turnover of money, or velocity.

Even though real GDP expanded at a 2 percent annual rate in the first half of 2008, the latest conventional wisdom is that the recession we find ourselves in today is either a continuation of one that began a year ago, or a recession that will last a very long time. The difference between the optimistic and pessimistic reading of the current situation is huge. If it is a “V” shaped recession, then the markets will recover quickly and strongly. If the U.S. is in a prolonged and deep recession, then the markets could fall much further.

Clearly, short-sellers have bet heavily on the latter being true. Short interest in October reached an all-time high, and it is clear that coverage of the economy by the mainstream business press has sided with this view. The argument that investors must eventually capitulate to the downside, and accept prospects for a deep and prolonged recession, is the conventional wisdom of the day.

But events are more likely to unfold in a much more positive way. With a “V” shaped recovery on the way, and corporate earnings unlikely to drop by anywhere as much as the bears believe, it will be the shorts that must capitulate in the months ahead. As a result, a “melt up” in equity values is much more likely than a further “melt down.”

ESSENTIALLY, WHAT THE U.S. is experiencing is a crisis of confidence. The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Survey fell to an all-time low of 38 in September, lower than its level in 1980 when inflation rose above 14 percent and unemployment was surging. This is irrational.

But it is understandable because the survey accounts for the period immediately after the President of the United States went on national TV and said people could lose their pensions, jobs and homes. This was hyperbole designed to gain support for the $700 billion bailout bill.

Financial markets are healing, in part because the government has finally put so much money into them that they can’t help but heal. Moreover, they are healing because the problems at hand were never as bad as many have thought, even though securities fell to levels that priced in one of the worst economic calamities since the Great Depression.

Much of the problem was due to mark-to-market accounting. While it may work well within a one or two standard deviation event, it breaks down, and actually accentuates problems, when the world faces market liquidity and pricing issues on the severe tails of the distribution. A $300 billion problem of bad loans has morphed into disaster three or four times as large. In addition, mistakes by the federal government in the early going of the current crisis, which included not suspending mark-to-market accounting rules, made U.S. financial market problems much worse.

MY VIEW OF WHAT has happened is completely different from the conventional view. Market pundits argued that when oil prices rose above $40 a barrel, the consumer would be wiped out. But oil went to $60, $80, and eventually $148. Yes, car sales suffered, but overall consumer spending continued to rise. It was in September, when panic over the viability of the banking system set in, that consumer spending was undermined. And by that time oil prices were falling sharply.

Another fear was that slumping housing prices would undermine consumer spending. This did not happen either. And still others have argued that the world is so wildly leveraged that an unwinding of this would create financial market mayhem. Nouriel Roubini, one of the most bearish forecasters around, predicted that it was going to get so bad that governments around the world would eventually be forced to close financial markets for a week.

The odds of this actually happening are very remote. What finally killed the consumer was not high oil prices (even though it did hurt car sales), or falling house prices, or tightened credit markets. What finally killed the consumer was fear. Fear that money market funds and bank accounts were not safe. Fear that credit would not be available. Fear that stock prices would continue to plummet.

The good news is that this fear will not last long. The bailout scheme put in place by the government, especially the support of the commercial paper market in late October by the Fed, has stopped the deterioration of the banking system and begun to firm up asset prices. It would have been easier and cheaper to suspend fair value accounting rules, but the government would not do that.