Could it be that increasing job losses are contributing to a sense of recession (false or not)? Maybe it's just the view from my particular industry (mortgage), but recession sounds like a euphemism for what's happening all around us in that world... Just attended a talk by a Freddie Mac economist with a relatively upbeat attitude, but some hard numbers to look at. Her explanations for why some are calling it a recession and others not were pretty interesting - having to do with measuring from different indexes, etc. Her take was that we probably aren't yet in one, but are borderline. She upheld the fact that recession is, really, just a (pretty undefined) term.
I don't know - I'm certainly no expert. I just know that a lot of people a lot smarter than I am are acknowledging that things aren't running as well as they have been the past few years. And, based on dropping house prices and traumas more than apparent in my particular industry, that's looking pretty legit right now...
No recession, yet. It looks like media politics. I saw an article with a survey by John Lott (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,343671,00.html) that gives media references to recession for 2008 compared to 2000 (both election years). In 2008 we haven't seen one month of negative growth, much less the three month needed to be an official recession. In 2000 we DID have an official three month negative growth and an official recession. However, there has been MORE media attention of recession in 2008 that in 2000.
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Could it be that increasing job losses are contributing to a sense of recession (false or not)? Maybe it's just the view from my particular industry (mortgage), but recession sounds like a euphemism for what's happening all around us in that world... Just attended a talk by a Freddie Mac economist with a relatively upbeat attitude, but some hard numbers to look at. Her explanations for why some are calling it a recession and others not were pretty interesting - having to do with measuring from different indexes, etc. Her take was that we probably aren't yet in one, but are borderline. She upheld the fact that recession is, really, just a (pretty undefined) term.
I don't know - I'm certainly no expert. I just know that a lot of people a lot smarter than I am are acknowledging that things aren't running as well as they have been the past few years. And, based on dropping house prices and traumas more than apparent in my particular industry, that's looking pretty legit right now...
No recession, yet. It looks like media politics. I saw an article with a survey by John Lott (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,343671,00.html) that gives media references to recession for 2008 compared to 2000 (both election years). In 2008 we haven't seen one month of negative growth, much less the three month needed to be an official recession. In 2000 we DID have an official three month negative growth and an official recession. However, there has been MORE media attention of recession in 2008 that in 2000.
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