A couple days ago I read an interesting article on the aljazeera web site titled Double-dip recession is unlikely. What made the article interesting wasn’t the source, or the claim, it was the reasoning behind the claim.
Most post-war recessions were kicked off when car sales and house sales and new construction plummeted.
There seems to be little risk of a substantial decline in either car sales or house sales and construction, primarily because the levels are already so low….
Both car sales and housing construction are already so low that they don’t have much room to fall.
What the author is claiming is “things are already so bad, it’s hard to imagine them getting worse.”
That’s a very interesting claim, but I doubt the author of the article learned it in an economics class. It sounds more like something he heard in a bar, and seemed to make a lot of sense after a few drinks.
That’s not to say he doesn’t have a point of sorts. It’s just that his point is that we are in a Depression.