Reply #5: My point was that macro economic indicators have been in decline for some time. [View All]

[Zynx]

Hell, GDP actually contracted 4th quarter of last year. A fair number of institutions were brought to the brink in August of last year and Countrywide and Bear Stearns were gone by March of this year. Unemployment began to increase in January of this year and home sales had already completely collapsed by the summer of last year. Indeed, the absolute crash of the stock market will be the emblematic event of this long recession, but I think history will date the beginning of the mess to before this. The reason that even though the Depression actually began before the stock market crash in 1929 they do not date it as such is because economic data was so weak back then. Now we have a lot more data sets to help us figure out when declines started to occur, rather than relying on purely anecdotal evidence.