Recession

The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that U.S. top economist Edward Lazear says he doesn't believe the United States economy is in a recession. I'm thrilled to hear someone out there isn't experiencing economic angst, but clearly the chair of the Council of Economic Advisors hasn't gone shopping lately....

From CNBC:

"Main Street has just entered the act. The peak of the pain is not visible yet," said Asha Bangalore, an economist with Northern Trust in Chicago.

The consumer strains are well-documented. Aside from the credit contraction, gasoline and grocery prices are on the rise, the housing...

This is a campaign issue. The economy is not out of the woods yet, even though stock prices are doing better, companies are making profits, and unemployment hasn't soared. Thank the lower dollar and government fiscal and especially Federal Reserve policies.

But, in fact, credit is still tight in...

I am recently back from a trip back to my home state of Texas, where former President George Sr. and Barb attend the Astros games and no one thinks twice about the adverts for Halliburton on the walls of the Minute Maid stadium (formerly known as the Enron stadium), unless...

Through the second half of 2007, to the collapse of Bear Stearns, US equity indexes were leading America into recession. Markets were discounting shares to reflect serious and prolonged earnings and profit reduction. Stock prices were indicating a long hard fall. Serious turmoil in the financial industry, housing collapse and...

Did you know there is an "official arbiter of when recessions begin?" It's called the National Bureau of Economic Research. It's a "private, non-profit, non-partisan," organization. It boasts that 16 of the 31 American Nobel Prize winners have been researchers there. The president of NBER announced on March 15 that...

In case you didn't know, the loss of 20,000 American jobs in April is actually good news. You see, economists had predicted 73,000 jobs would be lost last month, so thank God we dodged that bullet, right?!

In fact, the unemployment rate fell to 5.0% from 5.1%...

This week's economic news is better than it's been in a long time. Jobs losses are not so bad. The stock market's rising. Some say credit is flowing a bit again.

Are we out of hot water? No. But to the extent we are, thank government. And it's important...

The recession-deniers were out in force yesterday after the "better-than-expected!" GDP figures came out: See? The economy GREW in Q1! We aren't in a recession! All that horrendous economic and housing data is just media hysteria!

Here's what they didn't tell you:

First, those are just preliminary numbers. Maybe hold...

With the release of the latest GDP report, the possibility of a consumer lead recession just increased.

First, before today's GDP report there was a series of charts that caused me great concern. Here they are in the appropriate order.

Year over year job growth has been deteriorating...