The United States is already in a recession and has been since late last year in my personal opinion. However it will get even worse this year.
Slowdown yes, but the national economy must have two consecutive quarters of negative growth (a receeding, not a slowdown from prior gains) to have a recession.
That's what I say and that is correct....but that definition is generally retroactive, unless of course you have a reccesion, not a slow down for several quarters (more than 2). I, personally think that we will be in a slow down until the 4th quarter and will stay in a reccesion until the 3rd quarter of 2009. We will then have a weak economy for 2 or 3 years and then will have another reccesion or boom by 2011 or 2012.
Now, I wonder what will happen if we only have a slow down (the economy just levels out or recovers)... will this create reccession-proof economy or simply make our bubble bigger...
Recession proof? Thats probably impossible.
You will always get a relative bust after a relative boom...the main goal is two fold, to make the relative bust not as bad as the relative boom was good, and to make the bust shorter in time than the boom...thus...over time, the economy has strong long term growth.
In a sense, busts aren't horrible because they force policy makers and economic players to revaluate the economy and fix things that don't work well.
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