We have to admit that we’ve been kind of a little bit looking forward to the recession. Not in a real way, like we want anyone (especially us) to lose their jobs or have to learn how to grow crops or slaughter animals or anything, but just, like, in a “maybe everyone can finally cool it with the truffles and insanely overpriced handbags” kind of way. Like maybe we’ll all rediscover what is actually important and sit around singing songs and telling each other stories and making stone soup or whatever. And look, we’re not the only ones: “People seem to enjoy telling each other how bad it’s going to get and working themselves into a frenzy,” one analyst said recently. Hence all those “Party like it’s 1929” headlines. But now that the National Bureau of Economic Research, which makes the official call on these things, has finally gone and declared that we are in a recession and in fact have been since last December, and since the Dow spent the last hour or so of trading dropping 680 points (not that we are paying attention to that), we just feel kind of, well, depressed. And nervous, due to quotes like this from Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics:
“We see no prospect for near-term improvement.”
And annoyed, because we probably won’t see an end to statements like that anytime soon, either. Guess maybe we’ll do what we did last time there was a recession: start smoking pot again.
Dow Plunges 680 Points As Recession Is Declared [NYT]
