Is The Stock Market Catches Up With The Economy?

I suppose if you look back at my posts for the last year or so, you can see see that I have been a sort of economic pessimist. I have been seeing lots of things from housing sales/prices collapsing, to people going bankrupt and even my brother in-law who is in the middle of a house development struggling to stay afloat.....oil prices upwards of $100 per barrel and even watching gold going through the roof.

I think I even commented that I was surprised that the stock market continued to go up....past 13,000 at one point, and almost not caring about the state of the economy.

Now it looks as though inflation and unemployment is on the rise, and most daming of all, consumer spending for December was DOWN by 0.4%. (apparently only discount stores like Walmart showed an increase)

Well, the last week or so the stock market has been sliding, slowly on some days, and more quickly on others. But will it continue or for some reason rebound? I don't know.....it has been a total mistery to me so far.

Warren Brussee's BLOG (the guy who wrote the book suggesting a "Second Great Depression" would occure in 2007) has started to comment that things are really beginning to notice the downturns....and since much of it is in the various money centers of focus...like banks and mortgage companies....it is all getting proper focus.

So do I believe the current market moves, or not. If I do, what do I do.....putting money into CASH doesn't make sense if you believe that inflation will be the "release" for our economic pressures. If he resulting "escape" is deflation.....cash is the way to go....but deflation would be so very bad for the whole situation and would make our problem a very long term one indeed.

I'm no economist, but I would say that inflation will be the poison pill we take because printing money is well within the governments power and it would "solve" our world debt problem by simply diluting the debt.....of course, it will also mean our very valued dollar would become as valuable as toilet paper........so it might be time to invest in wheelbarrels like the German people needed after WWI....we might need them to pay for bread at the store.