It’s official. A report from the National Bureau of Economic Research confirmed what most Americans already know, we’re in a recession. The bureau evaluates the nation’s economic cycles and it says the U.S. has been in a recession since December 2007.
On that news Monday, the shaky stock market took a serious dive with the Dow Jones Industrial closing down 680 points at 8,149 — one of the worst declines ever. A lot of folks went shopping on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but experts fear consumer spending is not going to be enough to produce significant profits for retailers this holiday season. Some economists say the nation may not be able to struggle out of this downturn before mid-2009 or even sometime in 2010.
The Bush administration has been slow on the giddy-up in dealing with this economic crisis. Even now that the “R” word is officially being used to describe the state of the economy, the Bush folks avoid using it — like that’s going to help the situation. This is the second recession during the Bush years, the first lasted from March 2007 until November of the same year. Obviously, the economy is in worse shape this time.
At this point, we can only wait and hope that the brain trust assembled by President-elect Barack Obama will be able to steer the economy out of this financial mess before the country goes bankrupt.
