It's Official: We Are In A Recession

(Authors note 5-14-2012: This article was published in 2009. This article however can be used for educational and historical purposes)

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:

The big news that none of us knew about and all of us wondered about has finally been released today by THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH.

The Headlines Scream:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- It's official. The U.S. economy has been in a recession for the past year. The start of the downturn was announced Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The NBER -- a private, nonprofit research organization -- said its group of academic economists who determine business cycles met and decided that the U.S. recession began last December.

So not only is it now official.... but it's officially been happening since last December. Oh wow, thanks for letting us know! Maybe now we can begin to make some changes!!

We've all been hearing news of this recession for months now. Recession, depression,recession,depression........

All I know is that we certainly knew things weren't going well in the economy - and things have been getting even worse these past couple months. Massive layoffs, the 700 billion dollar bailout bill, foreclosures in the neighborhoods, rising gas prices, the rising cost of food, and a general feeling of all is not right with the world..........

So exactly now that we are being told that hey - yeah - we are officially in a recession, what exactly what does that mean for the average laymen like me? Or maybe you?

"By one benchmark, a recession occurs whenever the gross domestic product, the total output of goods and services, declines for two consecutive quarters. The GDP turned negative in the July-September quarter of this year, and many economists believe it is falling in the current quarter at an even sharper rate."

So I don't think we needed an official announcement of this recession for us to get the fact that our economy is in deep trouble..... If anything the announcement that we are officially in a recession is probably only good for the fact that now we know exactly what we are facing and that there is an official word for it.

(Kind of like when we are sick and don't know what's wrong with us, then finally the doctor gives it a name - even if it's not good we feel some relief that we finally know what's really going on?)

So OK ...now that we know we are officially in this recession - what can we do about it? Or can anything be done? Or does this mean we are heading for a depression now????

Well according to the same news source this is how we should handle this "official" recession:

"What's important is what is being done about it," Fratto said. "The most important things we can do for the economy right now are to return the financial and credit markets to normal, and to continue to make progress in housing, and that's where we'll continue to focus."

Ok, ahhh, maybe I missed something here but isn't this something we should have been doing all along???

(Dorsi Diaz is a freelance writer/publisher who writes on a variety of topics including political change and conspiracies. Please feel free to join her reader club and subscribe to her RSS feed to be updated on her latest articles. Thanks for reading)