The Economy and how you feel about it?

[What Exit?]

What I am seeing:
The economy is growing but consumer confidence is down, it is a weird time. Jobless rate is finally dropping. Congress might actually move on some job bills.

I think Consumer Confidence is just lagging right now. The foreclosure rate is also dropping. Though Credit Card companies seem to be bigger asses than normal. Many have raised fees and rates as high as 30%! :shock:

The headhunters I talk to are saying even tech jobs are slightly up but being filled via Monster and the like. Of course medical is short in many areas.

[Oliveloaf]

To defeat a global economy you have to defeat confidence.

There are too many people who can and will figure out how to make a buck, no matter what happens.

Things are picking up where I work. In fact, I am hiring.

I believe that this will be a very slow but steady recovery. Sadly, the jobs will come back slowly.

But, you can quote me, the worst is over.

[Cluricaun]

The bottom has been hit, I think. There are still going to be long suffering issues that continue to spread, housing prices will not rebound to their highs for many, many, many years. Many states have what are known as "recourse loans", which when people either default or short sold their homes means that the financial institutions who were left with a loss can file a judgment for recourse....meaning that people who thought they got out of their houses without any pain will be sued for the difference between the sale and the loan amount. This hasn't happened much yet, because banks are still reeling with the amount of properties on their hands. Once that gets squared away they will start going after people again and this will cause bankrupcy filings to again skyrocket or worse.

And there are parts of America, Michigan for example, which I just can't imagine rebounding. There is really no industry to employ anyone left. Who's going to move into Detroit or Flint and start hiring tens of thousands of people?

I think that the economy in terms of the economy meaning Wall Street have begun to get a bit more stable, but it's going to take something epic to really breathe life back into things so that we're at least where we were after the dot.com bust in the late 90's.

[CatInASuit]

I'm waiting for a double dip in the UK.

Agents are saying things are picking up, but in reality they are inflating their own numbers to make themselves look good. Same goes for house prices.

The deficit is looking so bad that all the main parties are saying it will have to be drastically cut. And when that takes place, it is going to cause a lot of pain to a variety of people depending on which areas do get cut.

[kk fusion]

Looks like I'm with the majority here. It was pretty easy for me to find a good IT job this month.

[hatesfreedom]

I've heard some scary reports on our debt levels in regards to China and foreign investment, so I couldn't say. We're at a very dangerous time.