Quote Originally Posted by LL2
A recession is defined by 6 consecutive months of negative GDP (gross domestic product) growth. I'm not sure how the GDP did the past couple months, but we will not know for a few months if we are in a recession for sure.

It's more likely that we are in a period of stagflation. Where inflation is growing (which we see in rising food and gas prices), and where unemployment is rising. A ying/yang going on at the same time.
I have to confess to not reading all 28 or so pages of this thread or going to the What's For Dinner or whatever thread that was mentioned.

I see that somewhere along the line, the thread departed from the original title, so I quoted the above from page 1, as it seems on point, if not entirely correct.

As LL2 said, there is a clear economic definition of recession, which has not even come close to being met. The talk of recession is primarily demagoguery by the anti-Bush Adminstration leftist mainstream media.

Where I differ from LL2 is the talk about "stagflation". This is a term coined during the Carter years to denote something which had basically never happened before, and which went against all textbook economic principals.

Students learn in Econ 101 that there is a "tradeoff" between inflation and unemployment. In the Carter years, we had extreme inflation AND very high unemployment resulting from a stagnating economy--lack of economic growth.

THAT scenario is absolutely NOT what we see today. Unemployment is about 4.5%--lower than any time in nearly a half century. Growth has slowed down from the economic boom brought on by the Bush tax cuts, but it still exists. And inflation is still low--up just barely from the extraordinarily low rate a few years ago. True, oil/gasoline prices are up, and that has raised a lot of other things due to higher transportation cost, etc., but statistically, inflation is NOT alarmingly high.

Likewise, the mortgage "crisis" is a "tempest in a teapot" promoted by the degenerate and biased media. Defaults are under 1%; Actual foreclosures are well under that. Some demagogues have actually compared this to the Depression when foreclosures reached 50% of mortgages. They were 2-3% for several years in the late70s/early 80s.

To a great extent, this is all election year politics more than anything else, as the leftist media tries to generate trouble--at America's expense--to try and influence the election in favor of one of the leftist candidates.