Sheldon the common people do not have any money. They do have access to credit right now but at a substantial cost compared to the rates the banks are getting. DO PEOPLE NOT MATTER??? People do not want to take on any more debt because they can't pay for the debt they have right now. People that have jobs and can afford to buy a new car do not want to because they have realized that they don't need a new car every 3 years. The entire economy of the past 30 years has been built on an expansion of the money supply that didn't really exist.

If it took mountains of federal dollars to prop up the economy is it really in good shape? Isn't that just a further expansion of the money supply that really doesn't exist? If that is the case why don't we just allow every ATM to dispense an unlimited amount of money to anyone that walks by? Just think about all the things people would buy if they didn't have to worry about money!!!!

Wait a second, we did do that but just for banks and Wall Street firms. They have access to a nearly free endless money supply. In fact they can borrow money and buy treasuries that pay them profit off of borrowed money. WHAT A GREAT SYSTEM!!!

By all accounts the majority of the country is still in a deep recession. We never got out of the Great Recession. Only Wall Street and those with connections to federal bailouts got out. Corporations used accounting tricks to hide debt and the CDS market has swelled past the entire GDP of planet Earth. But nobody seems to care.

The US treasury flooded the market with $14 trillion in cash but somehow this hasn't been recorded as debt. Essentially free money was given to banks to prop up the stock market and in the process crate the largest equity bubble in history.

Analysts are saying the P/E ratios don't mater anymore and debt doesn't really matter. They are even saying that employment doesn't really matter since we can just increase productivity out of a smaller workforce. They are only saying that in an attempt to hide how insane the market has become over the past two years. I mean really a P/E ratio of 100/1 isn't overvaluing a company???

Public corporation CEO's are legally bound to increase the value of their company at any cost. Isn't that notion just a little insane? Can nobody see where that thinking eventually leads?

Good comments Iridium, thanks for taking the time.

The topic is double dip or not, and I say not. I do not believe the market will tank and I see nothing in your treatise to contradict this.

I agree with you that there will be hardship for a long time and many of the people that got us into this mess have dodged a bullet. However, enterprise leads to jobs not jobs to enterprise so employment is always a lagging indicator.

I also agree (as you probably are well aware) that we have propped up the economy for a long time and will be paying for it for a long time.

I would not venture into stocks with 100:1 P/E's but there are plenty paying very high and sustainable yields at low P/E ratio's.

As far as CEO's "legally bound" increase the value of their company "at any cost", this is a misstatement. The have a fiduciary responsibility to make every effort, but not at all costs. They have many responsibilities and this is but one.

Just for the record, aren't we always "adrift in uncharted waters"? We know how the Great Depression worked out in the end, but who knew from day-to-day in the '30s what the outcome would be.

We agree that "techinical analysis" can not predict the future movement of any stock. There is no magic way to know the future.

So we drift, using past practice as a guide but not certain that past results mean anything beyond missed opportunities. I am dubious when anyone tells me that the past is irrelevant, as in P/E figures, but things do change and we are too close to the events to see the broad patterns.

I try to follow Mel Brooks' advice, "Hope for the Best, Expect the Worst." And laugh.

Recovery is slow because our business leaders did not see it wise to modernize American factories and went abroad to countries like China & India, looking for better quarterly profits and selling our expertise and, also, to enable them to get fatter bonuses. The executives' greed worked for them and not for the American workers. Unfortunately, America being the most consuming country in the world, this greed brought huge trade deficits and, also, the budget deficits as the tax receipts of the government shrank relatively. Thus, the double-dip recession, true or not, is expressive of loss of confidence and agony of the main street. The fact is that the main street's confidence in our ability to recoup as a country is badly eroded. Thanks to greedy American executives and reelection-hungry politicians. Double-dip recession or not, we are not going to see the prosperity we enjoyed in the past, unless we change our ways! Obamas,living in the luxury of the White House, are not able to see that!

how can we be in a double dip, when we're still in the single dip? the president has played with the stock market manipulating it, to make it look better while he saboutaged the BP oil rig. November can't come soon enough, when we can finally impeach this clown and he WILL show a birth certificate, when the GOP takes back the house and senate.

Mr. G,

The clearest example of prejudice is exemplified when one fabricates information to make a point and goes as far as to do so with utter nonsense.

Only ten days prior to the BP fiasco in the Gulf, the president announced a policy to extend coastal oil leases adding hundreds of thousands of acres to potential new drilling sites. Nothing could have been worse for the administration and the oil companies then the BP blow-up.