Market Review: March 2009 Commentary

The “D” Word
Certainly, there is still a body of vocal activists on the internet that attack journalists for mentioning that word, based on the belief that if it gets published enough, it might actually make it happen.

There is actually an index that measures the number of times the word “depression” is mentioned in various newspapers. The chart below came from the Economist a while ago, but it certainly shows the increase in mention of “depression” as the crisis has unfolded.

But what exactly is an economic depression? Surprisingly, there is no accepted definition, such as we have for “recession”. A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. New Zealand’s September quarter GDP was the third consecutive negative quarter, so we have been in a recession since the start of 2008.