It's taken a year, but the government finally admits what most of us have thought all along: The United States is in a recession. Ah, but according to the announcement Monday from the National Bureau of Economic Research, we've been in a recession since December 2007.
The Hound certainly must have a recessive gene and be a little slow on the uptake, but it's taken some Washington economic think-tank policy wonks this long to determine we've been in an economic downturn for that long? Maybe they have the recession gene because the usual definition of an official recession --- if The Hound remembers Econ 101 correctly --- is that gross domestic product declines for two consecutive quarters. Last quarter GDP, the nation's total output of goods and services , declined. We'll see what happens this last quarter.
But if we've been in a recession since last December, this would be the second economic downturn on George Bush's watch. No wonder Republicans got clobbered in last month's election. And, it would be just one more notch in Bush's presidential legacy.
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