Writing at Forbes.com on Monday, a columnist says:
Good news. The keeper of the business cycle books, the National Bureau of Economic Research, announced Monday what economists have been saying for a long time--this is a recession. And, NBER says, it's been a recession since December of 2007.
The announcement comes as no surprise to anyone with a TV, newspaper or more than 10 friends. Why is it good news? We've already gotten through one year, and now the question is not "are we in a recession?" but the slightly more optimistic "are we in a recovery?"
Yep, isn't it wonderful. Let's all do happy talk. So are there any good signs?
Typically, the stock market bottoms out a little after halfway through a recession and then starts its climb back up. If the indicator holds ... then the recession would end sometime next year.
If "sometime next year" is later than April, it would still make it the longest recession since the Great Depression, but never mind; this is the unintentional humor part: That was posted at 5:20 pm. Precisely 44 minutes later, this turned up on Forbes.com:
The stock market suffered one of its worst days since the financial meltdown Monday, slicing 680 points off the Dow Jones industrial average as Wall Street snapped out of its daydream of a rally and once again faced the harsh reality of a recession.
Not only did stocks end their five-day winning streak, they erased more than half the gains. The Standard & Poor's 500 stock index, one of the broadest market gauges, lost nearly 9 percent.
No, the market didn't drop back to the low of November 20. But it did, in Forbes' astute description, puncture the "daydream" that a recovery has already started.
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