About that Recession the media has been talking about

I have heard the word "recession" so much since high school in the 90s that it no longer worries me when the media jumps all over that term. The economy goes up and down and always will.

Resession? Maybe not yet. However Last year it would cost me around $300 for groceries. Now it is costing me around $500. Gasoline? about $75 a month maybe, Now $200 easily. SS increase in Jan? 2.5% and they took that away with an increace in Medicare part A,B, & D. My Medigap went up and so did the cost of electricity by at least 50%.

Why did all those things go up in price? Bush & Co policies and illegal wars were a big contributor. As the dollar devalued the price of oil went up because it took more dollars on the world market to buy it. Therefore the price of everything went up because most things are transported by trucks.

No resession? tell me about it. I don't care what you want to call it, it is!

You are kidding, right?

"Why did all those things go up in price? Bush & Co policies and illegal wars were a big contributor. As the dollar devalued the price of oil went up because it took more dollars on the world market to buy it. "

Um, that is not why oil prices are expensive. It is because speculators are driving up the prices. It is easy to blame everything on the President but that is not true. Oil is going to crash now just like the dot com bubble and the real estate bubble. We are just about to see the crash of the oil and commodities bubble

All I know, is this, over and above politics and the like, is that everything has nearly doubled in the past year, and I am not just speaking about just the price of gas. Many things started to escalated in price prior to the price of gas going haywire. Call it what you may, this ecomony is in bad shape period!

"While that is not great growth it appears to be setting up what Alan Greenspan always called a soft landing where we go in a downturn, which always happens because the economy is cyclical, but we dont go into a recession."

Greenspan in on the record saying that there is a greater than 50% chance of recession, although he also says the chance of it becoming a severe recession has decreased significantly.

Wil B., the numbers dont seem to bear that out. It seems we have gone of the soft spot.

You elitists never participate in recessions anyway , do ya??????

bush/cheney/oil companies/big business/ screw average Americans = current government policy.

This will begin to be corrected on Jan 20 ,2009....

Don-

Of course you dont like good news on the economy it gets in the way of your worship of bush hate.

Could you please define "economy"? It certainly is NOT the economic wellness of middle and lower class citizens here. I've always considered myself to be in the upper middle class as far as income, and purchasing power is concerned, but we are looking more like a depression than a recession for the majority of Americans!

Do you really think that folks who make even $10.00 per hour can afford to pay $4.00 per gallon for gas? There is NO oil shortage at all right now. What Americans do not realize is that their buying power is being destroyed by the "PRIVATE" and illegal, and 100% unconstitutional federal reserve bank. The only good news would be if we have congress vote out the ILLEGAL federal reserve bank!!! We don't need private bankers controlling our money supply!

By the way...the economic stimulus checks we are getting....they just put our country into deeper debt...and the money was created from nothing...and yet will will have to pay it back with interest...to who? The private federal reserve bank! Your fucking government just sent you a loan that you have to repay!!! We are over ten trillion dollars in debt, and will never be able to repay it....and the economy is good?

We are headed for a severe depression worse than the elitest "engineered" depression of 1929.....The general idea of the planners is to kill off about 5 billion of the world's inhabitants....so they can create a sustainable population....no money means no food, and no housing....the value of the US dollar is dropping so fast that there is no investment that could even keep you on par with the drop in value....the dollar will soon become worthless in world markets.......you can than your government, and the bankers that own them...

" Wil B., the numbers dont seem to bear that out. It seems we have gone of the soft spot."

He was aware of those numbers when he made the comments. While he believes the chances of recession are greater than 50%, that's an improvement over earlier estimates.

For the many people who gained little or no benefit from recent economic growth, whether or not the economy is officially in recession or not doesn't really matter.

With inflation running at 10% it is pretty hard to make that 2% raise go very far.

Remember George has never run a successful company. All had to bailed out by daddy and Saudi Arabia.

The damage George has done to the economy is massive. It will take a very long time for all the crap to get ironed out.

As far as the "numbers" go you realize of course that they are modifying the contents of those numbers all of the time to make things look better. Take inflation. 3% Bull. The necessities that I need to buy every week have gone up dramaticly not 3%.

Who ever gets the nod in November is in for some serious hard financial times. Similar to what Carter inherited from Ford/Nixon.

.9% WOOHOO!!!

We have a full blown recession here in Ohio , no matter how well the wealthy are doing.

This thread serves to prove to all that, when a mind has been properly manipulated and demolished, ANYTHING can be seen as a positive thing. The entire nation is collapsing...healthcare, education, highways, etc., but, by Golly good Molly, as long as SOMEBODY has said that we're NOT in a "recession,' everything is perfect.

This is yet another shinging example of why republiCONs can NOT be left in power of this country; They are utterly clueless to reality. They live in a bubble of delusion, and that is precisely where they should be left. Good riddance, GOP.

Clark the nation is not collapsing. For collapse check back and look at Jimmy Carter's Presidency

There's so many fallacies layered and strewn about this article and your subsequent comments, it's hard to even know where to begin.

First, inflation isn't so easily explained as "speculators driving up prices." Inflation is a monetary phenomenon, always. The artificial expansion of the money supply and bank credit is what drives up prices, by diminishing the purchasing power of the monetary unit. You cannot increase capital by printing more pieces of paper, or by artificially expanding bank credit. You only increase the relative supply of claims to already-existing capital, meaning each individual claim represents less.

An economy can only grow (and function, in the long run) via the accumulation of genuine savings. Genuine savings -- which accrue only when members of the public put aside present consumption in favor of future consumption, not when the central bank prints green pieces of paper -- must be available to underwrite investments in capital goods and consumer goods. When banks artificially expand credit, the result is a reduction in the rate of interest. It gives the illusion of a greater supply of available capital, which of course reduces the price of advanced capital (which is all the interest rate is). The inevitable, unavoidable result of this, is malinvestment; to the exact degree in which credit was artificially expanded beyond the aggregate supply of real savings avaliable to underwrite those investments.
The reasons for this should be obvious; for one, there obviously will not be enough resources avaliable (as determined by genuine savings by the public) to see every investment through to the end, and because the artificially-lowered interest rate will cause entrepreneurs to embark on projects that appear profitable only because of the artificially-lowered interest rate. If the genuine supply of resources available for investment purposes were truly reflected in the free market interest rate, then entrepreneurs would be able to accurately calculate which projects would be worthwhile, and which would have to wait.
The "recession" is the natural result of the bouts of malinvestment that occur during inflationary periods. The "bust" occurs for the simple reason that there was not sufficient savings to underwrite investments made during the inflationary "boom," and the "recession" is simply the market liquidating the bad investments, and returning to reality. Recessions are actually healthy; they are the markets natural healing process, the market attempting to move from the artificially-induced conditions brought about by government and central bank intervention and manipulation, to a sound and stable foundation based on reality.

Markets always move in cycles not because of natural phenomenon, but because of violent intervention by government and it's partners in the central banking cartel.
The way to get rid of boom-bust cycles, recessions, inflations, and depressions, is to get rid of the massive macroeconomic central planning bureaucracy called the Federal Reserve, repeal the "legal tender" law, and allow people to naturally gravitate back towards sound, free-market money; gold and silver have proven themselves ideal over centuries of human history.

Thanks for sharing.

The fed has to raise interest rates, to combat inflation. That will also make the dollar stronger in international currency markets. It will clobber homeowners with ARM's, of course.

Oops, I guess this article was wrong...

So very wrong. I'm sure MDP will be here shortly to apologize.