It’s official. The US has already been in a recession for a year! As the average recession is only 10 months, we are already in a worst than average downturn. It’s hard to say how long it will take us to get out of this slump as things seem to get worst every week but at least we know that everyone is going to do everything possible to keep this great country to a downright collapse.
The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) declared today that since December of last year, the 73-month economic expansion has ended. The current recession, which many expected to last till at least the middle of next year, will be at least the third longest recession since the great depression (the other two are 16-month cycles in mid 1970s and early 1980s).
It’s interested to note that the NBER doesn’t use the widely known measure of “two consecutive decline in gross domestic product” as the measure of a recession. Instead, it looks for a decline in economic activity as a true measure. Personally, I think that while it’s probably more flexible, it sounds sort of subjective to me. However, the NBER is a prestigious private research institute that is regarded as the arbiter of U.S. recessions so I guess they know what they are doing.
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