What do you call this? A recession? A deep recession? A depression?
Perhaps a The Great Restructuring? The Crash of ’09? A Disruption?
Patrick J. O’Keefe, economic research director at JH Cohn has another idea. He calls it a retrocession.
Michael L. Diamond, a business writer at the Asbury Park, N.J., Press, says:
I wouldn’t break out the bell-bottoms, unfiltered cigarettes and lead-based paint that you no doubt have stashed in your basement quite yet, but his point is a good one. After eight years of economic growth that was based almost exclusively on borrowing, the nation is returning to a simpler time when you bought what you could afford.
O’Keefe notes consumer, business and government debt at the beginning of the decade was $18 trillion. Debt at the end of the third quarter 2008 grew to $32 trillion, up 78 percent. Median income during that time dropped 0.6 percent.
The prescription: Paying off debt. Saving more. Spending Less. It hurts. But what else should someone from a CPA firm say?
