September may be scarier than Halloween this year. With reports on jobs, services, and manufacturing in the wings for the month of September, investors are bracing for dark skies ahead. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s speech at the Fed’s annual conference on Friday, while it hinted at further measures to come to keep the economy from receding further, did little to dispel the gloom.
In fact, some economists believe, as David Rosenberg said August 25, that the country is in a depression, not a recession, and continued troubles will not be a double-dip but simply more of the same. However, Bernanke, while acknowledging the current slowing of the economy, asserted that signs were still present that indicated an upturn in the economy in 2011.