The stock market rally of the past 2 months has done nothing to refute my concern that we are only in the early stages of a bear market that will continue for the next several months. Of course I could be wrong. I cannot see the future. I can only weigh the evidence so far. But so far I believe that the preponderance of economic evidence continues to mount against the bullish case.

The fact that many stock markets have staged a rally since the March lows has been cited by some as bullish evidence that the worst is now behind us and happy days will soon be here again.

For some valuable perspective on how bear markets have historically moved, watch this May 26 clip from John Authers at the Financial Times.com: Oil and the Markets.

Great charts John. Good work.   more »

In June 2007, I noted that 80 US Mortgage Lenders had then gone bankrupt since late 2006. We predicted that many more would follow. Today, less than 1 year later, the number has risen 225% to 260 according to Lender Implode.com. outpacing even our bearish calls. The number continues to rise weekly as the economic slowdown plays out.

Meanwhile one of the earliest bears to call the present crisis, Prof. Roubini still remains pessimistic over the economy and points out that stocks at present levels are dramatically under-pricing the length and duration of the on-going US recession:

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Following up on my entry from last week and its graph of per capita oil consumption rates, this site gives us the 2008 breakdown on a country basis.



Here we can see that although Canada is number 2 for per capita consumption, because there are less of us in the country, we rank number 9 in terms of overall consumption totals. Meanwhile notwithstanding the incredible populations of China and India, together they account for just under 12% of world demand. The US accounts for over 25%. This underlines why the ongoing US recession will put a slack in oil demand (once speculators move on). It also makes the point again why we in North America have lots of room to reign in wasteful consumption habits.

Some interesting comments in the past few days on present oil prices...   more »