Economy Has Not Recovered-John Williams

"Renowned economist John Williams says forget the happy talk about the so-called “recovery”—it ain’t happening.  Williams contends, “I wish I could say things are booming, but indeed they are not. . . . The GDP in the last three quarters, if you believe what they put out, is the strongest economic growth seen in more than a decade.  That’s not the common experience. . . . The consumer is in terrible liquidity straights. . . . The reality is the economy has not recovered.” 

Williams goes on to say, “In the fourth quarter in November and December, the traditional holiday season was the worst Christmas shopping season since the economic collapse in 2008.  January (2015) is off to an even worse start.  It looks like the first quarter is going to contract before and after adjusted for inflation, and that is very bad news. . . . You got retail sales, industrial production that’s going to be weak, and the housing sales numbers have never recovered . . . Any measure you look at is still well below coming into the recession, and again that’s tied to the consumer’s liquidity.”

So, why does America seem to be doing much better than the rest of the world?  Williams explains, “What’s been at work here is the perception that the U.S. economy is recovering, and the Fed doesn’t need to provide any more quantitative easing (money printing).  The dollar has strengthened, and as you see, our major trading partners moved towards quantitative easing because of the recessions they have.  Well, guess what?  We have the same problems as our trading partners.  We are still in recession.  They just do the numbers a little more honestly. We’re not done with quantitate easing. . .   As it becomes clear that the U.S. economy is still in recession, or a renewed recession, the speculation will come back that the Fed has to renew its quantitative easing or expand it . . . that will hit the dollar very hard.  As the dollar sells off, you are going to find oil prices spiking a new, inflation spiking a new and eventually the rest of the world will dump the dollar.”

Williams goes on to say, “The underlying fundamentals for the dollar just could not be worse. Fiscal conditions have not improved.  Deficit numbers last year were small according to headline numbers, but if you look at it with generally accepted accounting principles, it was still about $6 trillion . . . per year.”

at http://usawatchdog.com/economy-has-not-recovered-john-williams/