Is The Recession Really Over – Recession Ended in June 2009 News Reports Say
Is the recession really over? That is the question a lot of people are asking today as newspapers, news websites, and television news shows lead with a headline that seems to declare that the economy is back to normal. Of course, this is not at all what is going on. This presents another opportunity to take a quick look at how financial facts and financial reporting are not always in sync. First, the actual event that occurred is that the National Bureau of Economic Research, or NBER, released a statement saying that “a trough in business activity occurred in the U.S. economy in June 2009.” Obviously, this does NOT mean the economy is back to normal, a fact that the NBER statement goes out of its way to highlight. In determining that a trough occurred in June 2009, the committee did not conclude that economic conditions since that month have been favorable or that the economy has returned to operating at normal capacity. Why is every news outlet in America proclaiming that the recession is over then? Technically, the recession is over, but that doesn’t necessarily mean what people think it means. Assuming the picture below depicts a hypothetical economic …