Files containing subject Recession

Even forecasters on occasion hit the nail on the head. A year ago, despite concern over a sputtering U.S. economy, we said that it was "not the time to lose our good cheer." [READ MORE]

Fed chair Ben Bernanke may not like it, but Alan Greenspan has still got it. The day after the former chief uttered the "R"word, the stock market turned south, causing a case of the jitters. [READ MORE]

Typically, it takes more than one thing to lift an economy up or drag it down. In 1997, boosted by strong national growth, a cyclical upturn at Boeing, and the dot-com boom, Puget Sound employment jumped 5.1 percent. [READ MORE]

It did not exactly sneak up on us. Last quarter, after the fifth straight drop in our index of leading economic indicators and a virtual halt to the growth of taxable retail sales, we put the Puget Sound economy on watch. [READ MORE]

If you are wondering what is up, the answer is not much. Led by another decline in help-wanted ads, the Puget Sound leading index continues to plunge. [READ MORE]

Suppose we had a recession and nobody noticed. Something like this may be in the offing. We tend to view recessions with dread, like a serious illness: "recession may kill 19-year expansion." In fact, most recessions are just minor interruptions in the upward march of the economy. [READ MORE]

Recessions come in all shapes and sizes. The Boeing Recession of 1970-71, the worst economic calamity since the Great Depression, wiped out one-ninth of the jobs in King and Snohomish counties. [READ MORE]

Looking down the track, the Puget Sound economy has some hurdles to jump, not the least of which is an impending slowdown in the national economy. [READ MORE]