A recession by any other name...

For the past 6 months, economists worldwide have been discussing the possibility of an upcoming recession in the American economy. At first, the market responded with confidence. "We've had scares before," the market seemed to say, "why should this be different?"

Well, despite the fact that there are many reasons this should--or could--be different, the main question still seems to be whether or not we're actually headed for a "recession". The economy has certainly slowed and stocks have dropped over the past months. Financial giants have reported major "write downs" due to "subprime investments" and consumer spending for December has been reported as poor.

So, my question is, what is the difference? When does a slowdown become a recession? When do the numbers all add up to create that fabled status? When push comes to shove, I think that it doesn't matter if we're in, or headed for, a recession or not. It cannot hurt us to act like the economy is in the state it is today. The media is always so excited about these mythical labels that they can't even define that it seems we haven't known where our economy stands for nearly a year.

Whereas I found myself in their position at first, stating that I did not feel we were headed for any "recession," I now find myself saying we are exactly where we are today, and it obviously isn't as good or great as where we might have been one or two years ago. We're certainly not on an uptrend, so let's call this downtrend what it is... a downtrend in our economy... We're receeding from what many view as investor overconfidence in the early months of 2007 and perhaps soon we'll find investors trading at much fairer levels. Don't their egos need to be kicked down a few steps anyway?

So what should we as everyday Americans do? In my opinion, we should all save some money and watch our spending, just like we should have been doing anyway. If we're in a recession, we'll be better prepared... if not, what have we lost?