Easy to predict

Many experts fear the nation may be on the footsteps of a recession.

The country has seen indicators like higher unemployment rates and an economic slow-down for the last few months.

Purdue Ag Economist Larry DeBoer said Indiana expects to have about 1.15 billion dollars in savings by the end of June 2009.

He said although Indiana is in better financial shape than it has been in the last five years, it may not be enough.

A recession is one of those things you don't even know you have until it's over. It's commonly defined as a decline in the GDP for two or more quarters. That's six months, and we've had, I think, one month of decline, so talk of a recession is about five months premature. But I watched the news shows yesterday, and a lot of pundits and politicians were talking as if we're already in the middle of one.

So we undoubedly will have one, because of the phenomenon that a recession provides the best example of: the self-fulfilling prophecy. Consumer spending is something like 70 percent of our ecnomy. If people are uneasy about the economy, the will spend less, thereby bringing on the very thing they fear.

This just in: World markets tumbling because everybody thinks the Bush administration "has not calmed recession fears." Goody.