The Irish bailout gets the Taiwanese animation treatment

Plans for big-ticket purchases remained depressed with elevated prices, steep borrowing costs and reduced credit availability weighing on ordering activity. Finally, Americans called the odds for recession likely while CEOs were more sanguine, sustaining odds of roughly 35%.

For over a month, I’ve been concerned that markets have been pricing in a pair of conflicting economic scenarios. We first laid out the paradox in early December: equity investors say that they are hopeful for a soft landing for the economy yet seem to relish signals of more overt weakness.