Commentary
Another word has lost its traditional meaning. It’s the word recession, which is a postwar neologism in any case. The word depression—from the idea of depressed economic condition—became unsayable following the disaster in the 1930s. So the wordsmiths got busy and invented this new term based on the idea that the economy is merely in recess, which means to adjourn.
Very clever.
For decades, we had a stable definition of recession. It meant two consecutive quarters of declines in GDP. That’s it and nothing more. Whether or not it was a good measure, at least we had a standard to look at trends over time. We knew for sure what the word identified….