Experts Warn of Recession -- Duh, We're Living in One Already

Experts Warn of Recession -- Duh, We're Living in One Already
By Barbara Ehrenreich, Barbaraehrenreich.com. Posted January 10, 2008.

Growth and productivity mean nothing when they are de-coupled from most people's lived experience: being squeezed.

The soothsayers have slaughtered the ox and are examining the gloppy entrails for signs: Rising unemployment, a falling dollar, weak consumer spending, the credit crisis, a swooning stock market. Could there be something wrong here? Could we actually be approaching a, god forbid, recession?

To which the only sane response is: Who cares? According to a CNN poll, 57 percent of Americans thought we were already in a recession a month ago. Economists may complain that this is only because the public is ignorant of the technical -- or at least the newspapers' standard -- definition of a recession, which specifies that there must be at least two consecutive quarters of negative growth in the GDP. But most of the public employs the more colloquial definition of a recession, which is hard times. If hard times have already fallen on a majority of Americans, then "recession" doesn't seem to be a very useful term any more.

The economists' odd fixation on growth as a measure of economic well-being puts them in a parallel universe of their own. WorldMoneyWatch's website tells us that, for example, that "The GDP growth rate is the most important indicator of economic health. If GDP is growing, so will business, jobs and personal income." And the latest issue of US News and World Report advises, "The key... for America is to keep its economy growing as fast as possible without triggering inflation."

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http://www.alternet.org/story/73286/

U.S. causalities have been down significantly as of late.

We're not going to be to turn off the war machine, and restructure our economy into something that is more fair for everyone, without a slowdown happening first giving us time to rebuild. I think the recession after Bush got elected was a similar restructuring of our economy to suit those sadistic bastards.

about 10,000 in 2006 and about 8,000 last year...2008? 0,nil,nothing in the way of jobs where i live