Guru Focus reports on a recent event in Toronto where the featured speakers were Meredith Whitney, other bearish analysts and myself.

As I have argued over and over again I am not a perma-bear and will be the first to call for a sustained economic recovery and recovery of the financial markets when I see one. And while now the real economy is not any more in the L-shaped free fall in which it was in Q4 of 2008 and Q1 of 2009 (second derivatives are turning positive) we are still in the middle of a severe U-shaped recession that will last much longer than what expected by the current consensus that sees positive growth by Q3 of this year and growth close to potential (2% plus) next year. We at RGE (our 200 page Global Economic Outlook will be out in two weeks) instead see the US recession lasting until at least Q4 of this year (still -1.5% growth by Q4) and the positive growth next year being so low (0.5%) and the unemployment rate rising to 10% by the summer of this year and peaking well above 11% next year that it will feel like a recession even in 2010 even if we are technically out of it some time next year. The latest awful numbers on retail sales, job losses, initial claims, PPI deflation and business inventories are dashing the delusions of the optimists that there is light at the end of the tunnel already by Q3 of 2009. We don't see any meaningful evidence that the economy will bottom out before 2010. Here is the Guru Focus report "Degrees of Bearishness" comparing my moderate bearish views with those of other "uber-bears":