8 replies to this topic

[knoppixusr]

Firstly I am not from the states, but since I heard of the global recession and that it started in the US and trickled down to other countries. I have heard rumours or people saying the recession is over and recover should be starting. However upon looking at this website i have some doubts. Based on the list of failed banks in the US. It does not look like it is improving. Or is there other reasons for this list to becoming longer and longer?

Just take a look at how many banks closed in Jan 2009 and Jan 2010. also note the years from 2000 until 2007.
http://www.fdic.gov/...d/banklist.html

[Zagubadu·]

I haven't heard anyone say we are out of the recession. And that list just proves it even more. Where did you see anything saying that the U.S. are actually even out of it?

[evilsmiley25]

Last I heard, we were heading toward a depression, but I think the recession may be getting better. I hope it isn't bad much longer because I have been trying to find a job for after school, and no where is hiring.

[jlhaslip]

Here is a link to a site which has a decent, layman's explanation of the definition of a Recession versus a Depression.
http://economics.about.com/cs/businesscycl...depressions.htm

A recession is a period of at least two quarters of negative growth in the economy of a country.
A depression is generally considered to be a sustained Recession, although they mention that a Depression requires a drop in the country's Gross National Product by a factor of 10% or more.

I haven't actually heard that there has been a full "depression".
And those Bank failures are due to bad lending practices at the Banks. That can happen even during the good times, too, if the Bank is not careful.

[anwiii]

well i think we were DEFINATELY in a depression and i think the economy is definately getting better. not worse. although still unstable. if i want a quick guide to know how the exonomy is doing and how much faith people have in business in the united states, i take a peek at the dow jones industrial average or the nyse. it will give you some idea without hiding to much of the truth.

knoppixusr, on Feb 1 2010, 07:05 AM, said:

Firstly I am not from the states, but since I heard of the global recession and that it started in the US and trickled down to other countries. I have heard rumours or people saying the recession is over and recover should be starting. However upon looking at this website i have some doubts. Based on the list of failed banks in the US. It does not look like it is improving. Or is there other reasons for this list to becoming longer and longer?

Just take a look at how many banks closed in Jan 2009 and Jan 2010. also note the years from 2000 until 2007.
http://www.fdic.gov/...d/banklist.html

[kleong]

The fact is that there is something seriously wrong with the US administration. One bank collasping can be due to the fault of the bank or its management. However to see so many collasping or on the verge of doing so, the problems is much more bigger. Unless there is a total revamp of the system, such problem will arise again in the future.

[Semsem]

I think things are getting worse. Nothing is going as it should be. And Obama's administration is not doing anything to get the banks to pay back the cash or help the American people...

[dangerdan]

To say at any point, that country except Zimbabwe has been in depression recently is sensationalist and over stated. Yes, almost every country in the world went into recession, and many have now recession, including France, Germany and Japan. As well as the UK, though they registered just 0.1% economic growth in the last quarter, so revisions may well reveal we never left recession.

However, this was to be expected given the nature of the global credit crisis, as it has now become known. People must remember though, that throughout the recession, economies suffered compound negative growth, so even once we leave recession, it is a long way back to even early 2008 levels (pre credit crunch) let alone building beyond there.

I also think it is that the worlds rising economic powerhouse, China, managed to steer clear of recession altogether, and are already back to experiencing levels of growth comparable with pre credit crunch times. There was however, a bilateral, mass migration across China, thought to be greatest migration in history. As the credit crunch hit, the 200m Chinese people from rural areas who had come to the urban centres for employment were forced back to the villages until the global economy started to pick up again, at which point these workers returned to urban centres to reseek the worker they had lost a year earlier.

[eInfiniti]

I think the recession we are talking about is often called great recession. That is probably the best term to describe it. When is the great recession going to end? I believe it has already ended. It is simply that the end has not been officially announced.

The great recession started in December, 2007. Its start was not officially recognized until about a year later if memory serves me correctly. So it has been more than two years since it began. As far as I can tell, the world economy has been improving for at least several months. When the economy stops contraction and starts a sustained expansion, the recession ends. It may take quite some time to reach where it was when a recession started, but beginning of the expansion means end of the recession. Employment lags behind the general economy. So jobs will not come back very quickly at the beginning of the expansion.

Banks that suffered a great deal during the great recession tried to use whatever they could to survive. They probably had quite some resources to fight the recession. But, in the end, they may not survive long enough to get sufficient help from a recovering economy and eventually fail when the economy has already started to improve. In other words, bank failures also lag the general economy. If you think about it, not many of them failed when the great recession first started. So don't be fooled by the lagging effects of the recession.

Now, how strong the recovery will be and how long it is going to last are not so certain. At this point, my guess is that the probability of having a double dip is fairly small. I think economies like China's have a greater chance to pull the world economy into another dip since they were boosted so strongly by their governments.