2008 Economic Outlook?

Economics is about how much the world is willing to spend and how money is recycled, the basis of the Ecology of Money.Being 2008 an Election Year, market sentiments are not that favorable as before.As we speak today Monday 10th March 2008, the world economies are going into a recession, started off by the poor mortgage payments in the US in mid 2007, followed by the Northern Rock financial fiasco in United Kingdom which caused the worst run on the banking industry in the history of Great Britain, and after that, more banks signaled more troubles ahead with Societe Generale in France had massive losses which looked like another Barings Bank in the making.

Sentiments like these with the poor support of the current political situations like the poor support of the US President George W Bush and the legacy made things worse. The rising fears of Terrorism also caused more wide spread panics and with more recent bombings in the Hamas Controlled Palestinian Territory and the never ending retaliation by the Israeli forces and American Troops makes things worse off. Support for the War on Terror and Invasion of Iraq by the coalition forces caused more headaches for the supporters. British Prime Minister Tony Blair was kicked off from his chair because of this fiasco. Protests against the current ruling parties amidst all these chaos makes investors more jittery.

However, let's look back to the recent events that caused the panic attacks in the stock markets.

1) Assasination of Former Pakistan's Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto
2) Escape of Jemaah Islamiah Terrorist leader, MAS SELAMAT KASTAWI from Singapore Prison.
3) Federal Rate Cuts
4) Poor performance of the Sub-Prime Mortgage in the US
5) Return of Former Thai Prime Minister / Billionaire Thaksin to the country
6) Disastrous political landslide in the Malaysian General Election last weekend.

Factor all these and we have trouble. Yesterday alone, the stock markets in the Asia Pacific Region suffered as much as 11% loss on the stock markets, driving prices of commodity higher on panic selling with respect to the unstable / poor majority stake in the Malaysian Government since Malaysia accounts for a big chunk of the Petroleum and Biological Oils in the world economy. Gold prices and Oil soared against the US Dollar which is depreciating against major currencies like the Pound Sterling and the Euro.

US Dollar too slide to the $1.50 threshold against the Euro and these caused more headaches for fund managers alike. How bad is the economy? It's like Soccer, the ball is round, anything can happen. My bet is, down and out.