Four Bears, plus Simon

No, not Doug Short's excellent chart comparing four bear markets (http://dshort.com/charts/bears/four-bears-large.gif), but rather an article summarizing the views of four well-known bearish market commentators - Roubini, Whitney, Gordon, Sprott.

It's here: Here is the Guru Focus report "Degrees of Bearishness"

Some highlights/lowlights:

• Gordon: There will be a collapse in real estate prices - as much as two-thirds in the U.S. World trade will collapse. Government revenues will dry up and they will be unable to provide needed services. Pension plans will fail. The Dow will bottom out at around 1,000.
• Sprott: The $780 trillion in derivatives that are floating around the world will destroy what remains of the global financial system, he says. Commercial real estate will become a disaster zone. "This is not a recession, it is not a depression, it is an outright collapse," he told the audience.
• Whitney: Her current focus is on what she expects to be the next great shock: massive defaults on credit card debt. "Ninety per cent of Americans revolve their credit card lines," she said. "They use it as a piggy bank." As debt gets wrung out of the system, more people will be unable to handle the payments, credit card companies and financial institutions will face huge write-off, and the availability of credit will dry up. "Before it's over, every person in this room will have their credit card limits reduced and that will have a profound psychological effect," she predicted.
• Roubini: His message contained the usual large dollops of bad news: the worst is still to come for the world's banks, lousy corporate earnings in the coming quarters will drive stocks lower, many hedge funds will go broke, unemployment will top 10%, etc. But, unlike the others, he also offered a few glimmers of hope, describing himself as "more a realistic than a pessimist". We will avoid a depression, he said. Yes, the recession will be deep and severe and those who saw the March rally in stocks as the start of a new bull market are "premature optimists"

Here's a bit more from Roubini:

(I) see the US recession lasting until at least Q4 of this year (still -1.5% growth by Q4) and the positive growth next year being so low (0.5%) and the unemployment rate rising to 10% by the summer of this year and peaking well above 11% next year that it will feel like a recession even in 2010 even if we are technically out of it some time next year. The latest awful numbers on retail sales, job losses and initial claims are dashing the delusions of the optimists that there is light at the end of the tunnel already by Q3 of 2009. We don't see any meaningful evidence that the economy will bottom out before 2010.

And here's a recent dollop from Simon Johnson:

The Bank Run Next Time (Frankenstein’s Monster)

...remember this: The administration has little financial bailout money left and Congress is signaling that further funds to this end will not be forthcoming — in six months, the Treasury has squandered a reputation for safeguarding taxpayer value that was built up over 200 years. Great financial collapses can lead to great depressions.