[sophacles]

Remember in 2008 when we got tax rebates from Bush? Those were to get the economy going, based on the fact that we were entering a recession. It was a big worry. Unemployment at that point was < 5% too. In fact, I bought my house that summer, when housing prices were on the way down, but before the credit crunch made it impossible to get credit. We were already in a recession then, according to the news at the time anyway.

The collapse of LB and BS et al, is something different, those were a big deal panic, associated with, but not the start of, the recession. They were the worsening of it.

The actually interesting thing here is that we were told about the recession we were in for quite a while before the collapses, then we were told how we just got into a recession because of the collapses. Or have we always been at war with eastasia?