The Dismal Optimist
The Dismal Optimist is an essay produced by Peter T Treadway on a regular basis regarding investment strategy and global economic problems.
The Dismal Outlook for 2012
by Peter T. Treadway
"Dismal" is the only word I can think of to describe the economic and political outlook for the coming year. Deep recession seems almost unavoidable for Europe. Governments in all the so-called advanced countries face mounting debt and long term unfunded entitlement liabilities, huge banking problems and negative long term demographic trends. Governments' response will be to pillory the so-called "rich" as much as possible, levy higher taxes in a variety of ways, enact various measures of financial repression, pile on more and more regulations, print more money and ultimately continue the default process that began with Iceland and Greece. The only "good" that comes out of this will be an increased reluctance to engage in ill-advised wars (I'll let the reader decide which recent wars were ill-advised) simply because governments can't afford them.
