Recession Declared
On December 1st, after the Dow dropped 7.7 percent, the National Bureau of Economic Research offically declared the United States in economic recession, beginning in December 2007.
According to the Business Cycle Dating Committee, the recession is due to "significant decline in economic activity spread across the country, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in production, employment, real income, and other indicators." Job loss has steadily increased over the past year, with 60,000 terminations in February to 150,000 in September, culminating with over 300,000 losses in November alone.
Robert Talbut, a fund manager at Royal London Asset Management, assesses that serious recovery would require participation and response from more global governments.
Though in the midst of economic turmoil, holiday shoppers performed right on schedule. ShopperTrak reports that Black Friday sales were 3 percent higher than the previous year.
Tweet- 12-4-08
- Stephen Hershey's blog
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Consumption
Something that GDP will never take into account is the efficiency with which people find their happiness. Bhutan measures the Gross Domestic Happiness (GDH).
If the industrialized world consumed less, then the GDP would probably go down, right?. I'm no economist, but I feel like the reduction of waste (a good thing) would reflect in a reduction of GDP (perceived as a bad thing). Connecting with the "Arithmetic of Compassion," we must focus on a more holistic economic measure.
Rico de Fe
The question is when they will declare a Depression...
So many people like my parents are blissfully unaware of the impending destruction of the consumer economy. The fact that anyone is still shopping for toys and gadgets is just absurd. It's maybe even a sign that people are willfully denying what must happen - a return to the things that matter - real communities, real production, and deep investigation into our psyches.
"When an inner situation is not made concious, it appears outside as fate." Carl Jung
It seems the world is now telling us, begging us, to get down to business... At what point do people turn off the tube and realize there is more to life?
"The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us today are not elemental happenings of a physcial or biological order, but psychic events. To quite a terrifying degree we are threated by wars and revolutions which are nothing other than psychic epidemics. At any moment, several millions of human beings may be smitten with a new madness, and then we shall have another world war or devastating revolution. Instead of being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, landslides, and inundations, modern man is battered by the elemental forces of his own psyche." - Carl Jung
Nice quotes from Jung.
I couldn't agree more. Our own minds -- or, more specifically, the currently dominant ideologies living therein -- are driving us to the brink of extinction.
"Doctrines, scriptures, sutras, essays, are not to be regarded as systems to be followed. They merely contribute to understanding. They should be for us a source of stimulation, and nothing more... Adopted, rather than used as a stimulus, they are a hindrance."
Why Lazarus Laughed, Wei Wu Wei
For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings, but cannot fly."
The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran
"You must *be* the change you wish to see in the world." Mahatma Gandhi
I'm not sure...
I think in order to do any level of deep inner psyche work we would need a much stronger support network for it than we currently have. As someone who has been involved with the current system we have in place I would even go so far as to say that significant inner work is dangerous and would make you less stable than when you started unless you were very skilled, careful, or lucky.
Would he were fatter! But I fear him not:
Yet if my name were liable to fear,
I do not know the man I should avoid
So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much;
He is a great observer