What’s making me very frightened this holiday season? Predictions that the US economy will be losing ONE MILLION JOBS per month next year.
London-based GFC Economics is making a frightening prediction: By spring 2009, the United States could be facing more than 1 million layoffs every successive month.
Expenses related to corporate debt, and muddy credit markets consumed by fear, are driving a fast-approaching “hard landing,” claims a Sunday report in UK’s Guardian.
Even in a country with 300 million people, that’s a lot of folks who will suddenly lose their incomes, their health insurance, and quite likely their homes by the end of 2009. And with our nation’s negative savings rate, there aren’t any nest eggs for most of them to fall back on. Those who do have anything left in their 401k plans or IRA’s will likely be forced to dip into them early despite the onerous tax consequences. Which means we can expect the stock market to go much, much lower in the months ahead. This isn’t a hard landing, this is a crash landing the likes of which we haven’t seen — ever.
That better be one helluva stimulus package Congress passes as soon as Obama takes over from Bush, or we are likely headed for Depression era soup lines at warp speed.
