Morgan Stanley is now saying that there will definitely be a recession and there's nothing you can do to stop it so you might as well just give up. We're all going to die eventually, it's just a matter of when. Related/unrelated? At MS's IED party last night, "There was a slideshow on a large screen that contained awkward photos of associates and analysts (most people were not smiling)...a lot of Sean Paul...a MD walking around with a blinged out Santa hat giving his business card to anyone that would compliment his style...and one very sad analyst talking to the bartender about how even the low hanging fruit he hoping to score with wouldn't give him the time of day."
Morgan Stanley issues full US recession alert [Telegraph]
Recession Watch: Morgan Stanley Finally Sees Weakness [Alley Insider]
Under normal circumstances, we don't do service-y "how to" journalism, but after watching the market nosedive yesterday after Maria Bartiromo's bombshell assertion that Ben Bernanke told her the media had misinterpreted his remarks about future rate hikes, we're going to do everyone a favor and offer Mr. Bernanke a few suggestions. The most crucial point, from InvestmentNews.com's "How to Talk to A Reporter" guide:
4. Set the ground rules for the interview at the outset, but understand the reporter might not agree to them. As soon as someone says “I am a reporter,” assume anything you say may be used in print, quoting you by name, title and company affiliation. Unless you state otherwise at the outset, you are on the record.
In our experience there are a few other
unwritten rules:
1. Speak to the reporter loudly and slowly, as if you're talking to someone who recently had a lobotomy.
2. If you don't want to answer a question, tell the reporter that you can't disclose that information because it would be a RegFD violation. If you don't work for a public company and RegFD isn't applicable, tell them it's a RegFD violation anyway. They won't know the difference.
3. If you're a private company and you get the sense that the reporter in question doesn't understand basic finance (very, very common), it's a good time to inflate your valuation. Insist that twenty times revenue is a perfectly reasonable multiple, and if the reporter expresses any skepticism, tell them you also put together a DCF using a conservative discount rate and arrived at the same number. You'd show them the model, but there's a buggy macro you have to get your analyst to fix, and... hey, maybe later?
How to Talk to a Reporter [InvestmentNews.com]
The mystery... The uncertainty... The real age of Anna Bernanke according to the About.com Ben and Anna Bernanke marriage profile...
No one knows.
And by no one, I mean me.
And the tea leaves aren't saying anything about the whole inverted yield curve thing, either, (probably for fear of violating some little-known sub-clause of Reg FD).
But if oracle Bernanke's predictions tonight in New York don't work out, he can always fall back on the strategy favored by the original. From pbs.org:
"Arguments over the correct interpretation of an oracle were common, but the oracle was always happy to give another prophecy if more gold was provided."
Market Yearns for End of Rate Hikes [CNBC]
