We are not in a recession.
We will not be in a recession until Obama takes office.
We have had one quarter of negative GDP. We won’t now the next quarter until Obama.
Ha ha.
Hence, this article. Gotta make it W’s recession (although in fairness it largely is—thanks mostly to the ‘rat congresscritters though)...
Well, it is an agency which is tasked with this sort of thing. The article says the following...
Many people erroneously believe that a recession is defined by two consecutive quarters of economic activity declining. That has yet to take place during this recession.
This downturn longer than most
The current recession is one of the longest downturns since the Great Depression of the 1930’s.
The last two recessions (1990-1991 and 2001) lasted eight months each, and only two of the 10 previous post-Depression downturns lasted as long as a full year, according to the NBER.
In a statement, White House Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto said that even though the recession is now official, it is more important to focus on the steps being taken to fix the economy.
That’s what it says, and although I hear other FReepers saying it isn’t true — well..., the other FReepers are not the ones who are officially tasked with this kind of analysis.
Otherwise, if some FReeper wanted to do a “contrarian analysis” and present evidence to the contrary of what that agency is tasked with — then let them try and do that.
I would be inclined to believe what agencies who have been in the process of doing this for a long time — say....
AND..., I don’t believe this is an ordinary recession, but rather a large and worldwide depression that we are entering. It will deepen in 2009. It may not exceed the one of 1929 forward, because of the social services that we have in our present-day society, but it will be a longer than normal recession — especially with the worldwide-financial-meltdown.
Those employment figures are going to be real telling. They’ve been on the decline for a while and I would say that the employment figures are going to pick up radically, as many businesses cut back because of this world-wide-financial-meltdown that we’ve had (and that’s definitely not over yet, either).
Look for the coming depression to take hold in 2009...