The Government’s Recession Versus Your Recession

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 28, 7:11AM EDT · Published Dec 1, 12:45PM EST

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Bull_and_bear_image As if you did not notice, the US economy is in a recession. We have been maintaining that for just about the whole of 2008. Now today we have the official data from the National Bureau of Economic Research. The NBER said its Business Cycle Dating Committee determined that the U.S. entered recession in December 2007.

The committee defines a recession as a significant decline in economicactivity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months,normally visible in production, employment, real income and otherindicators. We have our own take and if you would like some markethumor you can see our new revised bear market financial terms that willhopefully make for some chuckles during hard times.

The committee uses GDP reports and Gross Domestic Income estimates as aguide. Domestic production and employment are primary conceptualmeasures of economic activity.

This determination was made on Friday and then released to the publicMonday. Everyone jokes about this "announcement" when it is made. Bythe time they have told you this, much of the worst has already beenseen. We still think more pain is on the way.

Jon C. Ogg
December 1, 2008

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.