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Recession

By Jay Newton-Small | @JNSmall | December 1, 2008 | +

It’s official, we’ve been in a recession for a year now. But, hey, don’t let that spoil your cyber Monday.

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  • FlownOver

    In other breaking news, things dropped fall down, not up.

  • Cliff

    It feels weird to go from economists saying “I don’t know if we’re in a recession, LOL” to “OMG we’ve been in a recession for a year!”

  • queencersei

    Two recesisions during the Bush Presidency. I wonder how the right wing nut-o’s will spin that so that it can all be blamed on: 1. Obama 2. Democrats 3. aliens from space.
    I would also like to point out that most American’s have already known this for some time. How nice that our “top economists” are finally up to speed.

  • Joe Bftsplk

    Not quite spoken:
    “OK, now that the election’s over, we can tell the truth without getting fired.”

  • jarais

    The committee determined that a peak in economic activity occurred in the U.S. economy in December 2007.

    Dude. That’s exactly when my economic patron saint told me to dump my entire stock portfolio. And I didn’t listen. He says “I told you so” and that we’re in for another six years of this.

    I’m off to read Nouriel Roubini with my happy pills.

  • sgwhiteinfla

    Of course Saxby Chambliss just said again yesterday that he doesn’t think we have been in a recession. Of course he was also caught on tape admitting he didn’t know what a recession was and then tried to lie and say thats not what he meant yesterday on foxnews Sunday and then got called out for it by Chris Wallace of all people. But some how I don’t think this is news to most leftist libruls.

  • http://www.inworldstudios.com jayackroyd

    OMG we’ve been in a recession for a year!”

    The NBER’s rule of two consecutive down quarters means that the earliest it can call a recession is about 7 months into it. While this is something the news people trump up, the purposes of these declarations are really research oriented not policy oriented. The Fed is looking at many other indicators of economic activity.

  • palininatowel

    Jay, I think you folks need a new section titled: News of the Obvious
    .
    I expect the next item on that page (following the “We’re in recession” story) will be:
    .

    Nation just discovers that Bush left White House in July; hasn’t been back

  • http://www.inworldstudios.com jayackroyd

    BTW, I did chat with head of the NBER, James Poterba, in October.
    .
    Archive is here.
    .
    http://inworldstudios.com/vs/
    .
    It’s in ascending chronological order. that interview is third from the bottom.

  • Cliff

    jayackroyd – I didn’t know that, about how recessions are defined. That makes this make more sense, but I still feel like there were a fair amount of people saying “Don’t worry about it” or “there’s still a chance we’ll recover.”

  • cfukara

    A year!
    It is said that one can tell the health of the economy by how high the ladies’ hemlines are riding.
    Now, be a sport, JNS. How about a full pic in the Swampland lineup?

  • cfukara

    And it is also said that one pic is worth many words.
    [And that 'insight' must have come from one of the more than half of Americans - a group populated heavily by the hard-working, very hard-working disciples of Hillary Clinton - who read no literary works ..]

  • 53_3

    Did we win the Vietnam war yet?

  • exile500

    Once Mitt gets in as Auto Czar, this recession will be over, tout de suite.

  • nibblybits

    When George W. Bush was inaugurated on 1/20/2001, the Dow hit 11388.44; today it hit 8149.09.

  • vwcat

    I think most of the people knew that a year ago and wondered why they kept denying it.

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