From Isabel in The Right Attitude to Rain :
That woman would like to be elsewhere thought Isabel; as so many people would. How many of us are happy to be exactly where we are at the moment? Only the completely happy think that they are in the correct place.

Never heard it put so well. Iam extremely happy :)

Why we need a recession -- soon
By Jon Markman
Check out the pessimistic housing headlines. When there's this much smoke, usually there is not just fire but a raging hell storm about to be cut loose. And Lord knows, there's much dry tinder available to the forces of financial doom, what with residential construction stopped cold, Detroit automakers idling and virtually the entire financial-services work force dusting off resumes.

So is the inferno really upon us? Well, no. And that's a pity because recessions clear out the excess optimism, debt and inventory that collect during long stretches of expansion. Moreover, a recession delayed may be a recession that turns into a real whopper.
Banking analyst Richard Bove points out that debt in the U.S. economy over the past 5 years has grown at a pace 3 times faster than income. Nominal gross-domestic-product growth has advanced at 3% while financial debt has grown at a 9.7% clip to $13.8 trillion.
As consumers collectively quit spending, retailers see inventories pile up, manufacturers fire workers, unemployment explodes and wage growth collapses.

Just as heroin dealers are in business to sell drugs, banks are in business to make loans. Their financial engineers will do everything in their power to force debt down consumers' throats.

Because the administration in Washington knows that if all those loans are called in and consumers can't make good on them, there will be hell to pay. And a nasty recession just won't do in an election year.
So the government is in the process of twisting the arms of Fed members to lower interest rates. That will allow banks to go back to one of their favorite recession-delaying ploys: encouraging debt-strapped consumers to refinance their loans at lower rates.

Banks took big write-downs this past October.
Investors will let them get away with that sort of rudeness only once. If the banks do it again -- shareholders are likely to slaughter the bank stocks, pushing them down at least another 20%.
"Bad loans are going onto their balance sheet faster than they can write them off," he said.
Once investors determine that the banks' bad loans are out of control and that the risk cannot be adequately measured, they will sell first and ask questions later. So, we are about to enter even more interesting times. A debt-led recession punctuated with joblessness and foreclosure is almost certainly en route. The only questions are whether it comes early next year or in 2009, and how deep a hole we'll need to dig for the burial. Whatever the timing or depth, continue to avoid the bank and brokerage stocks.

Fine print One of the first groups of companies to go in a recession: restaurants that serve the upper middle class. Recent victims include McCormick & Schmick's (MSSR, news, msgs) and P.F. Chang's China Bistro (PFCB, news, msgs).

Strangely, some stocks tend to do well in a recession, including REITs, insurance companies and, for some reason, containerboard makers. Also keep in mind that the best time to buy stocks for the long term is right smack in the middle of a recession, so you will want to start buying the banks and home builders once their currently hidden problems are more fully reflected in their stock prices. For more on the banks' issues, read my Sept. 14 column, "What the big banks aren't telling you -- yet."