MarketWatch: Don't be conned into thinking there will be a recovery in '09

[marmar]

PAUL B. FARRELL
Doomsayers warn: 'No recovery before 2010'
Wall Street's praying for new bull, but wishful thinking not enough for '09

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch


ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Dateline: 1720. Breaking news. One day, at the peak of its speculative frenzy, as the "South Sea Bubble" swept through Europe faster than the plague, an "unknown adventurer" in Britain ran this advertisement: "A company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is."

The scam was originally reported in Charles Mackay's 1841 classic, "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds," and updated by Forbes columnist and economist Gary Shilling in his annual "2009 Investment Outlook: 12 Strategies," to illustrate how little has changed between 1720 and today.

Investors never learn. And Wall Street knows it. That crafty 1720 ancestor of today's Wall Street investment bankers and Bernie Madoffs devised what we'd call an "IPO:" He "opened his office to crowds of investors at 9 a.m. the next morning ... closed at 3 p.m. after taking in a fortune ... then left that evening for the Continent ... never to be heard from again."

Warning folks: Wall Street's happy-talking bulls are now hyping economic recovery and a new bull this year. That's a slower, but equally lethal 2009 version of that famous 1720 trick. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/dont-conned-thinking-there-recovery/story.aspx?guid=%7BDD152E8A%2D13D9%2D4CBE%2DB444%2D7BE9F3148685%7D&dist=msr_2

[BelgianMadCow]

1. right. Sucker rallies, anyone?

I hear a lot of unfounded wishful thinking about the bottom in mid 2009 - um, end 2009 - um in 2010.