Are we in a Recession? I think Not

I recently commented on a blog post from Anna Glass of Internetplays.com in which she was mentioning a number of the critical bearish news elements hitting the market this week. Lehman Brothers, AIG, The banking collapse, and real estate bust were all a part of her blog. My comment of "We aren't in a recession, just a global slow down. However, I was having a conversation yesterday about the topic and he pointed out that when they bring the troops home we will have a depression on our hands because we'll have thousands of unemployed troops. This was a similar effect we had to deal with right after the first World War in our history, but then we had the roaring 20's to combat the problem. Kind of a weird twist but the political pressures from the anti-war movement might collapse our economy," was not taken too lightly by a few of the posters when they cried foul that I said we aren't in a recession because the Dow Jones was down by 35% in this year. So I looked up the facts.

A recession is measured by two consecutive quarters of negative GDP (Gross Domestic Product). For the first quarter of this year our national GDP was at 0.9% and for the second quarter our GDP increased to an ever whopping 1.9%. So by terms, we aren't in a recession. Just a slow down.