The economist in me has very mixed feelings about the Economist Magazine. The magazine provides good perspectives on global issues. It uses many indicators and fancy ten-dollar words that I like. It discusses a lot of poverty and development issues in developing countries that never gets addressed by any other media. At the same time, it's a widely circulated magazine that tries to cater to what's popular. It's almost like they pick articles that target right to their median readers. Their readers generally being more nerdy, nervous, and wimpy.
That's why this recent article with its picture has gotten me on edge. Despite Obama's recent cheerleading, the article paints a rather grim view of the economy. There are some very real murmurs going on that indicate things may turn around. The picture sums up the Economist Magazine's position. They're leaning towards the position that the murmurs, the glimmers, are false signals and we should tread cautiously. This cautious approach is likely to be directed towards its median wimpy readers.
My position is that it's very close to a coin flip. The economy can recover, stay flat, or dive from here. I don't take the scared position the Economist magazine takes. I just don't know enough to take any position.
But this recent article has caused me to re-consider my predictions. The Economist Magazine's front cover is notorious for being a contrarian indicator. This just might be one of those front covers. Their desire to appeal to the median reader and the group think can cause them to be slower in reading the tea leaves than they'd want to admit
This cover picture of the Economist is seriously making me consider that the worst really is over for the markets. (Not for the labor market and housing, because these two will lag any economic recovery.)
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