Reuters Blogs

Shop Talk

Retailers, consumers and prices

14:41 December 1st, 2008

U.S. in Recession since Dec. ‘07

Posted by: Lisa Baertlein
Tags: Shop Talk, , , , ,

The National Bureau of Economic Research, a prestigious private institute that decides when the United States is in recession, says we’ve been in one since December last year.

The call from the NBER came as news to almost nobody in the United States, where unemployment is climbing, available credit is shrinking, consumer spending and confidence are lagging and home prices are falling off a cliff after a huge rise that enabled homeowners to use their property as a cash machine.

When did your personal recession start?

2 comments so far

12/07? WOW…I colda told that in 11/07…clients money dried up…business has been DOA for 13 months..these guys just figured this out? my god we are doomed.

- Posted by Shepp

Just as the experts were slow to recognize we were in recession, our elected leaders are slow at coming to the realization that globalization of markets has failed. All nations, even ones with either a trade surplus or deficit, are at risk if any one of the many contributors to that world economy should fail. We all know the details of Wall Street’s conduct. If Japan, China and Europe were not so dependent upon the U.S. as an export market, they would not be entering such a severe recession. Only we would be suffering from the excesses of our financial and credit industry. I am beginning to feel as if our current brand of capitalism is a form of bad religion that few in power are willing to give up.

Maybe it is time for our educators to revisit the writings of Paine, Washington, Hamilton, Thoreau and Emerson so as to impart their beliefs in self reliance upon the next generation. After all, it is they who will be left to clean up this mess.

- Posted by Anubis

Post Your Comment

*
To prove you're a person (not a spam script), type the security word shown in the picture. Click on the picture to hear an audio file of the word.
Click to hear an audio file of the anti-spam word

House Rules:
  • We moderate all comments and will publish everything that advances the post directly or with relevant tangential information
  • We try not to publish comments that we think are offensive or appear to pass you off as another person, and we will be conservative if comments may be considered libelous information.