The Boondocks by Aaron McGruder for September 22, 2010
September 21, 2010
September 23, 2010
Transcript:
TV: ...And now, today's terror alert... The Homeland Security office is calling for a seventy-five percent chance of death, mayhem and destruction tomorrow through next Thursday. Over the weekend, expect a thirty percent chance of the fall of western civilization, combined with white slavery by Saturday, now in sports...
As an economist, I’m embarrassed by the recent revelation by my colleagues that the Great Recession “ended” over a year ago. In terms of how the profession defines and measures a recession, they’re certainly correct, but they’re also missing the point completely.
It’s like telling someone with a hangover that their hangover ended when they stopped drinking, since that would logically be when they would start to get better. To the person with the hangover, though, it’s isn’t over until they feel like a living human again. And so with the recession: to most real people (that is, non-economists) it won’t be over until employment and economic activity are back to something resembling normal. To claim anything else makes our profession look pretty stupid, or worse, intentionally deceptive.