When Will it be a Depression?

The textbooks have told us that the traditional definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. The GDP is a measurement of economic output whose levels are released every three months. If the numbers report a contraction in output in consecutive measurements, then we have a recession. It is now apparent that that is no longer the case. An organization known as the National Bureau of Economic Research is now the gatekeeper, and with a formula only known to them, will tell us when we formally welcome the arrival of a new recession. Their calculations and phrenologists told them that delivery occurred in December 2007. As the gloom spreads across the landscape and no industry seems untouched (save the SPAM factories churning out bricks of low priced pork parts at a torrid pace) is it time to begin sizing up the economy for a depression? The odd thing is that the word can't be found on the NBER website and economists have never reached consensus on a definition. The only one a few can remember was the "grand-daddy of them all". Do we have to sell apples on the street corner and ride the rails with our lives wrapped in a bandanna at the end of a stick to experience one? We have yet to reach a national level of double-digit unemployment, though there are pockets. We've only had a few dozen banks fail, not thousands, but when a bank fails in the 21st century it closes shop on hundreds of branches serving tens of thousands of people. Banks in the 1930s were often single small town money centers. There has yet to be a pall descending across the nation, but I'm convinced that the electronic age has created more isolation than connection. I'm not sure the average Joe is tuned into the calamity before us. Similarly to the 1930s, we wrestle with a new paradigm that we're uncomfortable with, this time Nationalization. In the thirties it was unbalanced budgets. We do carry the weight of the world we may leave our children. The multi-trillion dollar bill will be waiting for their arrival. When their crisis occurs, will there be the means to address it? I digress, but the market relies on faith and if we're bankrupt in that department, then it is a depression. The only answer is government stimulus, and the steely resolve of a new President. Without the luxury to worry about the future ramifications of our remedies, we have to apply it generously. Or people will be selling lattes on the corner to pay for the batteries to fuel their I-pods.