Alphabet soup

Now that we've settled the dispute (if you're wondering, the dispute is whether the US is in a technical recession), let's accept that Singapore is in a recession as well. Rather than go through the reasons, we can discuss the ways the economy can recover - it's more optimistic and allows some fantasising. Lately, I've heard many alphabets thrown into the ring to describe the situation and you can wonder at some of them:

One analyst mentioned an F-shaped while MM at a Clinton event said that it will not be a V-shaped recovery but he's not saying it will be U-shaped either. An economist suggested today it will be W-shaped since there is little to support recovery at this stage. Someone from OCBC volunteered L-shaped! I can't spell anything with these letters so let's return to basics. If you love crunching numbers, read this, which is the appendix section of the MAS review.

It has numbers and trends that will make you sit up and perhaps concoct your own alphabet - roman, greek or martian :-)

Reading tables 13 and 15 together, you can understand what must happen for recovery:
1 Tax revenue is coming down - less income to tax, less GST with reduced consumption, so non-tax revenue has to go up. These are your fees and fines.
2 Contributions from investment income are not going to be stellar since investment climate is in the toilet, so there will be even greater special transfers required.

This speaks of triple or quadruple whammy, so while W describes a double bottom, the only character I can think of that has triple or quadruple bottom is found in the arabic language.

On a more serious note, I do feel concerned that my being in the current state of flux is not getting me anywhere but where do I really want to go? I serve a greater Master and have faith in Him to lead me wherever I should go. Perhaps a good advice is what I heard from Suze Orman - doing nothing is better than buying something you don't know.