Just because an economist puts a name on an economic trend like "secondary post war depression" doesn't mean they understand it. The economy goes up, it goes down, it goes up, it goes down, it goes up, it goes down, economists usually don't know why or how.
I like reading stock news twice a day. Once, during trading when they have no idea what is happening in the trenches. And then again in the evening, to see what creative narrative msnbc came up with to justify a total about-face from what they wrote a few hours earlier.
I regularly see some article on the iPhone stock app saying something like "Dow (rise|plunge) on <reason>, markets wrapped", five minutes after open. Look guys, "markets wrapped" means "it's after close" and that doesn't happen for another 6:55 hours...
Not to mention -1% is not a "plunge", it is well within the normal variance.
Wat? Macroeconomic observations don't individually track every single microeconomic occurrence and assign a root cause that "Bob did it". There are many possible factors leading to recession but no singular root cause because it's macroeconomic, some include:
- OXPC: Over-expansion of productive capacity
- Contraction of credit
- Contraction of demand
- Knock-on effects of layoffs harming other sectors
