From Mish, regarding Greenspan’s comment that we may see a “quasi-recession”:
…this all depends on your definition of recession as well as the meaning of “quasi”. A quick dictionary check of “quasi” shows the meaning is “resembling; seeming;”
This sure does seem like a recession. However, please note that the NBER has still not proclaimed the end of the recession that started in 2007. Thus, it is quite likely that the US is still in recession and “quasi” needs to be dropped.
At least Greenspan minced words in the proper direction. For example “Quasi Recovery” would mean something that “seems like a recovery” even though it isn’t…
Slowly but surely the elite are swinging ’round to admitting that all is not well in the post-TARP, post-stimulus economic world. Truth is being doled out to the American people in little doses – trouble for the elite, here, is that while they’ve been talking up recovery for 9 months, the American people never really bought it. It is a hard sell, isn’t it, when you’re trying to convince people “underwater” on their mortgages and in fear of losing their jobs that things are getting better…
My belief remains that at the end of the day, when the numbers are all crunched a couple years from now, it will be revealed that we never experience any recovery, at all: that ever since the start of the recession in 2007, the private economy has continued contract. Slower at some times than others, but always ever less wealth – our ability to create new wealth destroyed by a mountain of debt and a tax and regulatory system which rewards the establishment and punishes the entrepreneur.
The climb out will be long and hard, and won’t start until we have a fundamental change in government policy.
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