Peter’s Blog

Bernanke Nods at Possibility of a Recession - New York Times

In his bleakest economic assessment to date, the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, said Wednesday that the American economy could contract in the first half of 2008, meeting the technical definition of a recession, and he encouraged Congress to help homeowners caught up in the mortgage crisis.

Unemployment is going up, the housing market is in freefall, the currency keeps sliding, you have just offered unprecedented loan guarantees of tens of billions of dollars to (previous) titans of the the financial industry – why yes, the economy just might, perhaps, potentially, eventually, in the worst case, with many qualifications see some trouble! What would really wow me would be if there wasn’t a recession. Way to go to all those ‘prudent’ reporters (The Economist especially) that have held off from saying the US economy is in recession until now.