Max Bublitz: The great race ... to the bottom

Predicting how long the downturn will last is a fool's game. Past cycles are no useful indicator because we are undergoing a more tectonic shift in the global economic landscape

One of the defining characteristics of the recent financial and economic upheaval has been the way that expectations about how things might unravel have continually fallen short of the way things actually did. Whether referring to the economy, jobs, writedowns, bailouts, defaults, earnings, or even the proper multiple to place on those earnings, one significant constant during this period has been that the breathtaking deterioration has continued to catch many by surprise. This tells us