Is The World Recession Over Yet?
Is The Recession Over Yet?
from Joseph Nykoluk
News is floating around that the global recession may be slowing down making way for new growth. At CBC News in Canada they are saying that Germany and France grew unexpectedly from April to June of this year. It was their first rise since the first quarter of 2008 for them.
CBC also stated that this growth ended the worst recession there since World War II. Germany also increased their exports by a massive seven percent and that’s not including consumer spending and other stimulus packages by Germany’s government.
Even Canada’s Toronto Stock Exchange’s S&P/TSX composite index has been climbing coming on the heels of the growth in France and Germany. As of right now on Thursday, August 13, 2009 it stands at about 10384. Although it was over 13,000 last year, it has risen almost 3000 points from around 7500 during late winter.
What is interesting is that the stocks have been rising slower since its low point. To me a slower rise in the markets means better staying power. You can see a chart of the rise in Canada’s market at MoneyCentral.msn.com.
The United States markets are still rather weak, but they are slowly climbing out. After all they are the largest market and you can’t turn something that big on a dime. Their retail sales were still weak because consumers are still rather nervous to spend their money.
It’s understandable considering the U.S. laid off a lot of people from a lot of corporations during this recession. Recovery will be slower than in other markets around the world, but they will recover. As that happens more jobs will be created, we hope, which will bring many back to work and create, again hopefully, a more confident market place.
One thing I wished I would have done last summer before the stock marketes took a hit was to buy gold when it was less than $700 U.S. per ounce. Right now it is hovering between $950 and $960 per ounce. Gold seems to be holding pretty well being a haven during rough times.
We’ll see though how gold does as the recession continues to wane and the recovery continues to take hold. There will still be rough patches for everyone, but if you can stand it and do your homework, I think you can beat this recession and ride the wave to recovery and prosperity.
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