Associated Press: It's starting to feel like another recession.

[Better Believe It]

Regardless of numbers, it feels like a recession
More bad housing, hiring data show an economy that may be faltering
By ALAN ZIBEL, DANIEL WAGNER
Associated Press
August 25, 2010

WASHINGTON — It's starting to feel like another recession.

Businesses are ordering fewer goods. Home sales are the slowest in decades. Jobs are scarce, and unemployment claims are rising. Perhaps most worrisome, manufacturing activity, which had been one of the economy's few bright spots, is faltering.

"The odds of a double-dip are rising and uncomfortably high," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, referring to the possibility that the nation will tip back into recession. "Nothing else can go wrong. There is no cushion left."

Economists are predicting the government will announce Friday that the economy grew from April to June even more slowly than previously thought, at an annual rate below 2 percent — weak for normal times and especially anemic right after a recession.

Taking out the volatile transportation category, orders for durable goods fell at the steepest rate since January. And business investment took its sharpest drop since the economic dark days of early 2009.

Read the full article at:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38855093/ns/business-eye_on_the_economy

[BadgerKid]

1. The press sure seems bent on the double dip recession meme

but to what end?

[Better Believe It]

3. Just look at the economic facts and it's not difficult to figure out.

[SheilaT]

2. Another Recession?

I don't recall the first one ending.

[John Q. Citizen]

5. It's a semantic thing. The first one techiquely (and semanticly) ended when there

were three months in a row of growth in the GDP, i believe.

However, that means nothing to how people feel, since not everybody is growing, in fact few are.

So, if we go three months negative, then we are in another recession, is I believe the definition being used.

[Yo_Mama]

8. No

That is common usage, but NBER is the organization that determines recession start and end dates in the US. And it does it by month, not by negative GDP quarters. From NBER's standpoint, the start of a recession is the month following the peak month (really the peak month), and the end of the recession is the month following the trough (deepest economic fall from peak).

However NBER only determines the end month of a recession after GDP or alternate measures of economic growth (such as GDI) have returned to pre-recession levels. Quite frequently NBER announces the start of a recession after it has already ended!

Since we haven't gotten back to our pre-recession peak in GDI, GDP, and industrial production, and since the number of total employed is still dropping, NBER has not officially set an end date to this recession. If we now slide into further quarters of contraction, NBER will probably consider the last year a continuation of a recession rather than a second recession. Recessions can have growth cycles contained within the overall contraction cycle.

On Friday we get the second pass at Q2 growth, and everyone believes it will be revised down, but still positive. But many economists now expect a negative quarter or two over the next three quarters, which might officially shift the recession's end date into 2011.
http://www.nber.org/cycles/general_statement.html

[unblock]

9. i don't think the part about returning to pre-recession levels is correct

if the economy generally contracted by 50%, then started on a long upward path, they would certainly not wait until the economy DOUBLED before declaring the the massive contraction had ended.

they generally wait until all the FINAL final revisions of all the various statistics have come in, and are conclusive enough over a long enough period of time to determine that a contraction has actually started or ended. the delay in is not a function of sloth or waiting for pre-recession levels to return; it is simply a matter of being very deliberate in their decision.

above all, the want never to have to revise a declaration of the recession beginning or ending. in particular, they want to guard against the possibility that there might be a small uptick in a longer contraction, in which case they would view the entire period as one long recession rather than two shorter recessions with a brief expansion in between.

[John Q. Citizen]

10. Wow, thanks for the info, very interesting.

[kentuck]

4. It's rather simple....

If we go into another recession, that means the other recession has ended and the new recession cannot be blamed on Bush. The old recession has ended and a new one has taken its place. The new recession belongs solely to Barack Obama.

[John Q. Citizen]

6. Give me that old time recession? It is good enough for me, by the way.

[Warpy]

7. Hey, Alan, where the fuck have you been?

For about 90% of us, it's still the same damn recession and it's starting to feel more like a full blown depression since our jobs are still disappearing and if we've still got one, we're finding the terms of our continued employment getting worse by the day, with our purchasing power continuing to decline.

Our houses aren't worth as much, our 401K plans that were supposed to see us through retirement are now 301Ks if we haven't had to burn through them in long periods of unemployment, and we're getting just a little bit desperate out here.

So excuse us if we hoot a bit and wonder just what planet you've been living on all these months.