Saturday, March 8, 2008

Recession?


U.S. employers shed 63,000 jobs last month, the most in five years, reinforcing a widening view that the U.S. is falling into recession. Among economists and politicians, the debate is shifting to how deep the downturn will be and how to ease it...

Private-sector jobs fell by 101,000, the third straight month of declines. The February unemployment rate edged down to 4.8% from 4.9%, but only because some job-seekers quit looking for work.

"I believe we are facing the most serious...economic and financial stresses that the U.S. has faced in at least a generation -- and possibly much longer," Lawrence Summers, who was Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration, said Friday at a Stanford University conference. "We are in nearly unprecedented territory with respect to financial strain."

Edward Lazear, chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, told reporters, "I'm still not saying that there is a recession," but "there is no denying that when you get negative job numbers, realistically the economy is less strong than we had hoped it would be."...

The last two recessions, in 1990-91 and 2001, each lasted only eight months. "This is going to be our weakest quarter," said Mr. Lazear, predicting renewed growth by summer.

read the WSJ article

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