Us media folks have really been singing the blues for the past three months, reporting grim economic indicator after depressing consumer confidence survey as evidence that the debt-funded party is O-V-E-R and we’re staring at some tough financial times.

For a while I resisted believing that the economy is in the tank. My informal economic polls of friends, co-workers–really anyone who would take it– indicated that for the most part people were fine personally, although admittedly a little scared by all the depression recession mumbo jumbo.

But despite my informal poll results, I eventually succumbed to recession fever after reading gloomy story after gloomy story and reporting out a fair number that failed to come to a definitive conclusion about the health of our pocketbooks.

Perhaps not knowing is even more terrifying than knowing just how bad things are. It’s the feeling that there’s a monster under the bed, but he hasn’t reached his hand out to grab us–yet.

Now there’s proof that there’s been no recession so far. Our economy grew slightly in the first quarter, like it did in the last quarter. Pretty darn slow, but still in positive territory.

In other news, the Federal Reserve’s committee also lowered interest rates by a quarter point today, to 2 percent. The committee’s statement was peppered with words like “uncertainty” “subdued” “weak” and “softening.” They were careful to avoid the “r” word. You know, recession. But clearly the troops are on alert.

What do you think? Do you think the country avoided the “r” word in the first quarter but we’re in the midst this quarter? Does it even matter if we’re officially in a recession or not if we’re hunkering down as if we are?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 at 2:19 pm and is filed under economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.