Over at The Big Picture, Barry Ritholtz makes this point.

On a trailing one-year basis, that puts the Price to Earnings Ratio (P/E) at over 19 as of today.  This does not make the market cheap.

And what about 2009? Again, the analysts are in a race to find the bottom.

From Bloomberg

From The Wall Street Journal

As if life wasn't tough enough for chief executives of real-estate companies struggling with the recession, they are also having to cope with price swings in their stocks, which normally are relatively stable.

That is making it harder for them to do deals, raise capital, attract institutional investors and compensate employees.

From Ghana, via Division of Labour

From Bloomberg

Putting long-term economic growth in perspective at Economic Principals

From Martin Neil Baily and Matthew Slaughter in The Wall Street Journal.

We noted earlier this year that dividends and buybacks had consumed consumed all profits and more since 2004.  This is not healthy given that growth should be at least partially funded out of retained earnings, given the ephemeral nature of capital markets. 

This trend continued into the third quarter of this year.

From Greg Mankiw

I like Nassim Nicholas Taleb.