There's no such thing as a "recession".

Sorry, but "recessions" don't exist. It's just a word made up by the media to make us feel worried.

When the news is slow, a person at a newspaper says, "Hmm, what should I write about. Hey - what about the economy? I didn't get a raise this year; we must be having a recession!"

Then they phone an investor or a bank and ask if we're in a recession. The person at the bank has no idea and says, "I'll crunch some numbers and get back to you."

They look at some government statistics and type some stuff in their calculator and say, "YES! We're in a recession."

Then the newspaper prints the article, and all the other banks read it and say, "Yes we are!" because they don't want to be left out.

How do I know there's no such thing as a recession? Ask a random person to define a recession. No one will be able to. There's no definition. The Economist magazine says that it's a negative GDP two quarters in a row, but even they admit that the definition doesn't work and is outdated.
Basically a recession means we're not making as money as we should be. That's pretty vague. We can still afford food, clothes and shelter, but we can't afford amazing food, clothes and shelter.

Basically a recession means we're still super rich compared to 99% of the world and 99% of all humans who have ever lived, but we're not super super super rich. We're just plain old super rich.

Boo hoo.

One day they will suddenly announce that the "recession is over". And nothing will be any different.

Just like they said the financial system was "collapsing" and in "chaos". I just looked out the window and don't see any riots in the streets.

Here are some more observations about "recessions":

I love them because it's a break. It's a break from all that hard work making money. It means more downtime and relaxing. More layoffs etc. Less work to do.

Companies love them too because it's an excuse to layoff the slackers or sell crappy parts of the company or cut wages, etc. It's an excuse to tighten the belt.

Governments love them because it's either an excuse to spend more money (Obama's stimulus) or an excuse to cut money (BC Liberals cutting funding). Also they have the perfect excuse for when things go wrong. "The recession!" and "Things are worse than we thought!"

You never hear the word "depression" anymore. And by the way, depressions don't exist either. A few years ago a couple scientists proved that markets were too efficient nowadays for a depression. They won the Nobel prize for economics.

Recessions are good because it gets rid of the crappy employees and crappy companies. It cleans up society's trash, and lets us start all over.

So basically I'm going to enjoy this fake recession while it lasts.