ECONOMIC VIEW.  Still A Debate Over Recession!  The public debate still continues over whether the US will undergo a recession in 2008.  (Wealthy) economists and financial commentators are even betting bottles of champagne on it.  One regular CNBC guest, Brian Wesbury, chief economist for First Trust just wrote a letter to The Wall Street Journal stridently projecting no chance of recession (I hear).  Then I read where former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan just updated his view of a recession ahead forecast.  Well, not his forecast per say, whereby he still says the odds of a recession are slightly more than 50%, although he admits we don’t have much data or indicators signaling such yet.  He basically said whether a recession arrives or not all depends on long term interest rates.  He says all global central bankers, including our Fed, have lost their power to influence long rates after many years of globalization.  In decades past, these same bankers could influence the trend of long term rates to a certain extent.  But no longer.  Today the marketplace is too large and diverse.  Thus more powerful, macro-economic trends now dominate.  Dr. Greenspan predicts if the free markets drive up global long term interest rates, say because inflation expectations going forward continue to rise, a recession will surely appear.  What could cause long in check inflation expectations to rise?  How about the Federal Reserve throwing more and more money at our current economic problems.  Bottom line, we have to watch the 10-year, benchmark US Treasury bond and the 30-year, long US Treasury bond.  Their yields have been driven down incredibly by the flight-to-safety trade which has been going on for the last six months.  So this move is way overdone and they could counterswing anytime, as has happened the last three days.  Big trouble will certainly occur when yields consistently go up.  Schwartz View:  I long held the theory that it was only when the Fed cut interest rates that we’ve have to worry about the old man bull market.  Because the Fed wouldn’t cut rates until they smelled big economic trouble ahead, like an oncoming recession.  Looking back over the last 4 ½ months to when the Fed started cutting rates beginning last September, my theory seems to have been validated as most stock markets topped out between last July and last October.  Still I didn’t foresee the Fed cutting rates because of a financial crunch like occurred.  I figured the Fed would cut because the economy was in danger of falling into recession.  Now that’s occurred as well.  We have both which means even bigger trouble.