I don't know how long this "recovery" is going to last. Does anybody have an answer to long a period it will it take for the economy to tank again, what should I do to prepare, how bad will the next downturn be?
It's not beginning to recover. What are you even talking about?
Political Atheists Blog
I don't think many people around here are willing to guess about market timing. The philosophy of Mises is rather that such a thing cannot be properly calculated. How things will unfold will depend on what people will choose to do. It's not a matter of data mining. The economy does not consist of aggregated variables married to each other by historic correlations, but of billions of individuals. And unfortunately most importantly today, of a handful extremely powerful government agents. If Obama follows the example of FDR we'll have one scenaria. If he instead follows the advice of Ron Paul we'll have a very different one.
Most Austrian leaning investors I've seen trying to time this desaster during the last few years, have been too early. The madness of the boom went on longer than they'd anticipated. Probably "thanks to" Chinese monetary policies and financial innovations in the derivatives markets among other things.
About bull moves in this bear market, bearing01 in another thread here posted this link which at the end compares the quantitative easing of Bank of Japan, after their stock markets had fallen 50%, with that of the FED today. A 20% bull rally followed, but then came another 50% fall and it took 4-5 years to recover those QE-levels again. Same thing will not happen again, because many things are different. But something similiar, with other levels and other time periods. The bottom line is that the policies of the FED and the Treasury do not solve the problems which caused this recession, au contraire. The only trend is further down, one way or another. But how it will play out over time is anybody's guess (and a few powerful politician's decision...)
http://www.contraryinvestor.com/moprinter.htm
Volatility is very high now. Some daring investors will get rich, out of luck, insider information or some hidden insights.
It's not fascism when the government does it.
“We must spend now as an investment for the future.” - President Obama