WE ARE NOT IN A RECESSION

[majic]

This may just be arguing semantics, but the 2 quarters of negative growth thing is not an "erroneous" definition.  It is the original definition.  There is no doubt the economy is struggling; but frankly, they just decided to change the definition to fit these particular circumstances.

I am sure they have their reasons for doing so.

"Founded in 1920, the National Bureau of Economic Research is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to promoting a greater understanding of how the economy works. The NBER is committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic community."  --from the NBER website, since the CNN article seemed to erroneously define who they were.

Edit:  Don't get me wrong, btw,  I fully agree the economy is screwed, I just wonder why they are so determined to use that particular word, especially since just the use of it erodes confidence.

[NEARY]

America just entered a reccesion i thought? like today i thought it did..

I am not sure

[USRanger]

Rgr, they repeated it on CNN all evening.

[Nwbie]

of course you do - don't blame those who were actually tasked with the oversight .....

600 million a day without anything to back it up...yeah blame someone else

ostrich people

[drdeathx]

In macroeconomics, a recession is a decline in a country's gross domestic product (GDP), or negative real economic growth, for two or more successive quarters of a year.

An alternative, less accepted definition of recession is a downward trend in the rate of actual GDP growth as promoted by the business-cycle dating committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research.[1] That private organization defines a recession more ambiguously as "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months." A recession has many attributes that can occur simultaneously and can include declines in coincident measures of activity such as employment, investment, and corporate profits. A severe or prolonged recession is referred to as an economic depression.

Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property
located in the United States -- decreased at an annual rate of 0.5 percent in the third quarter of 2008,
(that is, from the second quarter to the third quarter), according to preliminary estimates released by the
Bureau of Economic Analysis.  In the second quarter, real GDP increased 2.8 percent.

LOL 4th quarter not finished 2008

[cpxxx]

This is all semantics, it is a recession. That should be obvious. It's like the Captain of the Titanic arguing that the ship was merely suffering a delay due to technical issues and is not sinking. Just ignore all the water sloshing around the upper decks.

This is just the start of it.

[Eagler]

600 million a day without anything to back it up...yeah blame someone else

ostrich people

nope, just blaming the people who caused the latest (and largest) bottom to drop out by not doing their jobs .. the oversight committee - look them up - it's the same group of clowns who now say they can save us LOL

[Nwbie]

nope, just blaming the people who caused the latest (and largest) bottom to drop out by not doing their jobs .. the oversight committee - look them up - it's the same group of clowns who now say they can save us LOL

you mean the guys who found this?
"Wasteful Spending by Halliburton and KBR in Iraq: $2.7 billion. Investigations by the Committee have documented wasteful spending by KBR, the former Halliburton subsidiary, under the contract to support the troops (LOGCAP) and the contract to Restore Iraqi Oil (RIO). During a February 2007 hearing, the Committee learned that the Defense Contract Audit Agency identified over $10 billion in questioned and unsupported costs in Iraq, with $2.7 billion from the two KBR contracts alone.3 Earlier Committee investigations found specific examples of unchecked spending by KBR, such as billing taxpayers $45 for a case of soda and $100 to wash a bag of laundry, inflating costs for gasoline delivery, and abandoning new trucks that had broken down instead of maintaining them.4"
http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20081003181709.pdf

good old Haliburton,,,,  ostrich people

[Anaxogoras]

This is all semantics, it is a recession. That should be obvious. It's like the Captain of the Titanic arguing that the ship was merely suffering a delay due to technical issues and is not sinking. Just ignore all the water sloshing around the upper decks.

This is just the start of it.

Well said.  "The ship is not sinking, which is defined as blah, blah, blah.  The water you see does not fit that definition.  Therefore the ship is not sinking."

When I hear a definition argument, I suspect that a new definition is needed or the term is becoming irrelevant.

[Eagler]

you mean the guys who found this?
"Wasteful Spending by Halliburton and KBR in Iraq: $2.7 billion. Investigations by the Committee have documented wasteful spending by KBR, the former Halliburton subsidiary, under the contract to support the troops (LOGCAP) and the contract to Restore Iraqi Oil (RIO). During a February 2007 hearing, the Committee learned that the Defense Contract Audit Agency identified over $10 billion in questioned and unsupported costs in Iraq, with $2.7 billion from the two KBR contracts alone.3 Earlier Committee investigations found specific examples of unchecked spending by KBR, such as billing taxpayers $45 for a case of soda and $100 to wash a bag of laundry, inflating costs for gasoline delivery, and abandoning new trucks that had broken down instead of maintaining them.4"
http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20081003181709.pdf

good old Haliburton,,,,  ostrich people

what does that have to do with the recession? zero - nothing.
thanks for playing

[Nwbie]

what does that have to do with the recession? zero - nothing.
thanks for playing

600 million a day - without anything to back it up - China stops buying worthless government backed papers- mortgage securities, why?  take a guess - wasteful government spending...next - since China no longer wants to spend their money supporting our government - the financial markets come unraveled, wasteful government spending is shown to be the largest factor in the unravelment of financial securities backed trading, if monies not available to back up fed - how many trillions are we in debt now ?.... thanks for sitting on the bench and cheering for the wrong team

Game was way over - long time ago

[Eagler]

600 million a day - without anything to back it up - China stops buying worthless government backed papers- mortgage securities, why?  take a guess - wasteful government spending...next - since China no longer wants to spend their money supporting our government - the financial markets come unraveled, wasteful government spending is shown to be the largest factor in the unravelment of financial securities backed trading, if monies not available to back up fed - how many trillions are we in debt now ?.... thanks for sitting on the bench and cheering for the wrong team

Game was way over - long time ago

if gov wasteful spending created recessions, we'd been in one forever ..
it was easy credit that sunk this ship as the ones in charge of its oversight were asleep at the wheel .. you know the ones that want to save us now...