The State of the Economy and Recession in The USA and Canada

This article was written in 2009 and not much has changed to advance the US economy since.

The state of the American economy is now reaching a monumental low likened to the 1982-83 recession and the great Depression of 1929. People are throwing out the words,recession and even depression. However the New York Times article dated April 18, 2009, concludes that there really isn't a clear-cut definition universality accepted to define recession. The definition they use in their article is, "Recessions are commonly described as two or more quarters of a declining gross domestic product."

This examiner found it interesting that they also say that there is no official body in the USA that will declare the beginning or the end of a recession. However, the New York Times do say that the independent organization, The National Bureau of Economic Research, located in Cambridge, Mass, stated the USA entered a recession on December 1, 2007. Today we all except that fact that the USA was hit hard by the recession and though not his fault, Obama is blamed for not being able to pull his country out of the recession as fast as everyone would like. Why it is not Obama's fault is that this job cannot be done in two years by any residing leader of any country.

Canada and therefore by extension Montreal has been luckier not suffering as badly as the USA but every country has had to struggle. In fact the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was so optimistic that Canada was not going through a recession, he has just gotten around to admitting it now.

The National Bureau of Economic Research defines a recession as an economic slowdown, "normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales. They go on to say that a recession occurs just after the economy has peaked at an all time high and then slows down again. They say that recessions normally last about 11 months. Yet, this one has lasted for close to a year and a half with no immediate end in sight.

We now see in 2010 that the predictors have been off and we are still very much in the throws of a recession.

Sources:

http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/r/recession_and_depression/index.htmlhttp://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:dVCC0-KezywJ:www.faireconomy.org/files/pdf/state_of_dream_2009.pdf+is+the+state+of+the+economy+making+people+depressed%3F&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca&client=firefox-a

http://www.sbindependent.org/node/2645

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/360/8/749