It looks like I missed the news briefing, but in the last couple of days it’s obvious the economy, particularly America’s lackluster employment situation, will be the 2012 campaign point for the right. In particular, I’ve seen the word depression to define the current economic situation at least three times over the last two days.
Could it work? There is no absolute definition of an economic depression that I could find. The gray area leaves a lot of room to wiggle.
I last heard the argument about the spring of 1983 in a college finance class I was taking. The professor was certain history would determine that era of 13%+ interest rates and bank failures as a depression.
Is it bad? Yes. Are we going to double-dip? Probably. Is housing going to recover soon? No. (Check out this local SE Wisconsin foreclosure story.) And I’m certain that while I argue Obama’s recent economic recovery plan landed on it’s rump, at least one of you will emphatically declare it wasn’t enough.
Fasten your seatbelts, we’re in for a ride.
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More on this subject soon. Reality is getting in the way of writing time today. 
Double-dip?
Two factors which deserve serious consideration:
1) ECRI is not an “economics-based” forecaster and they don’t see a dip—although they DO see a pause, and have been saying so for 90+ days. They are rarely wrong, by the way.
2) Global Insight is the outfit Wisconsin uses for its economics forecasts. They are also rarely wrong–and they provided the info which the State used when announcing a $600++million increase in tax revs over the biennium.
If you can overcome those forecasts, perhaps there will be a ‘double dip.’ (No fair using Black Swans, if they occur.)
HOWEVER: this is not ‘optimism.’ Obozo will have an 8++% unemployment rate to contend with in the ’12 campaign.
the present generation does not have a clue about what a real depression is. groping for an apple or a piece of bread is more like it. see the movie “Grapes of Wrath” to find out what the middle class was like. we in the USA have it easy.