The 90’s were bad years for Bear fans. Measured by the Dow Jones Index, they had only one victory, a small 4.34 percent index drop in 1990, against 9 defeats. By the S&P 500 Index, 1994 was a Bear win as well, but by a wimpy 1.54 percent only.

The economy is showing distinct signs of slowdown, which is unlikely to end in a “soft landing,” but instead in something much more exciting and noisy. When you are flying as high as the economy has flown in the past few years, and the engine of speculative fever is abruptly turned off by NASDAQ’s fall, […]

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses” wrote Emma Lazarus in dedication of the Statue of Liberty. It is a beautiful sentiment, noble if you subscribe to the altruist Judeo-Christian ethic. But its economic side-effects should not be ignored.

Personal income dropped 0.2 percent in November while personal consumption rose 0.2 percent. The U.S. savings rate, already negative, thereby lurched still further into the red.