Cancel That Depression

I keep reading in the mainstream media about how the U.S. economy is in recession, in a depression, is crumbling, and so forth. Lets look at the facts.

First, the definition of "recession" varies, but generally it means at least two consecutive quarters of no economic growth or economic contraction. While we are seeing a slowing of economic growth in the U.S., right now we are not seeing economic contraction.

The Federal Reserve Board Chairman Bernanke is set to give more testimony to Congress today about the state of the economy and the markets are reacting already.

U.S. stock futures edged lower on Wednesday after the eighth-biggest one-day point rally for the Dow industrials, with attention turning to testimony from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on the economy, interest rates and the credit crunch.

While there has been a lot of volatility for a variety of reasons, yesterday was, as the story points out, the eighth largest jump in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in history. Just to be clear, that is a good thing, although you would not know it based on the MSM. But continuing on, later in the story is buried this little nugget:

The International Monetary Fund now expects the U.S. economy to grow by only 0.5% in 2008, while European growth is set to slow to 1.3%, news reports said, citing leaked documents. The IMF in January had trimmed its 2008 U.S. forecast to 1.5% and projected European growth of 1.6%.

So, amidst all the gloom and doom, the U.S. economy is still expected to continue to grow, albeit by a small 0.5% rate. But that is still growth nevertheless, even during all the current negativity and volatility. Therefore, if that holds true, the U.S. is not in a recession despite all the wishful thinking by the anti-U.S. MSM that this be true.

The moral of this story is do not let the media tell you what to think. Glean facts and data from them as best you can, and then draw your own conclusions.