What Is This World Coming To?

According to Breitbart.com,  the worst recession in 80 years,  perhaps the worst economic downturn in human history, and certainly the worst recession ever, (depending on who you ask) is almost over — already.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress Tuesday that the economy should pull out of a recession and start growing again later this year. But in testimony to Congress’ Joint Economic Committee, Bernanke warned that even after a recovery gets under way, economic activity is likely to be subpar. That means businesses will stay cautious about hiring, driving up the nation’s unemployment rate and causing “further sizable job losses” in the coming months, he said. Read the rest of this entry »

Consumer prices in November plunged by the largest amount on records going back 61 years as energy costs posted nearly double the decline of the previous month.

The Labor Department reported Tuesday that consumer prices fell 1.7 percent in November, surpassing the previous record decline of 1 percent set in October. The drop was the largest one-month decline dating to February 1947.

The huge decreases reflect the severe recession gripping the country and raise the pressure for the Federal Reserve to act decisively to guard against a debilitating bout of deflation.

In other economic news, the Commerce Department reported that construction of new homes fell in November by 18.9 percent, the biggest drop in a quarter-century. The steep decline pushed construction down to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 625,000 homes, the slowest pace on records that go back to 1959.

Hmmm… a little article from January worth reading. It explains in very simple terms how this “recession” might not even be real.

Is America headed inevitably toward recession? Maybe; probably; who knows? If anyone could accurately predict the economy, they’d be billionaires in no time.

One thing is certain, though: Simply hearing about the possibility of a recession can bring it about. This is due to a combination of two distinctly non-economic factors: psychology and the news media. This is nothing new; sometimes in the process of reporting about a problem, the media actually makes that problem worse.