Up until the Depression, recession had a moral character: it was supposed to purge the body economic of the greed and excess that attends a business expansion.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Wall Street excesses helped lead to the Great Recession.
A normal recession disrupts people's lives, but a long recession destroys them. You lose output, prosperity, family stability, self-esteem, and many other qualities on what looks to be a semi-permanent basis.
America had been a boom-and-bust economy going into the Great Depression - just over and over and over, fortunes were wiped out, ordinary families were crushed under it.
A recession is predominantly for the middle class. Where I come from, the majority of people have always lived in a recession.
It was a recession when I graduated, but I was so unequipped to have a job anyway, I don't think it would have mattered if the economy was booming. I think I was expecting bad jobs. But as it went on through my 20s, I began to wonder how things were going to turn out.
The 2008 economic crisis and Great Recession forced widespread restructuring throughout the U.S. economy - not unlike a company gritting its teeth through a lifesaving bankruptcy.
Ironically, for the mega-rich, recession brings with it the ability to live well at a lower cost and with less of a hassle.
I think that capitalism in general is responsible, not for the worldwide recession, but for a lot of suffering, both in the United States and around the world.
The other thing is quality of life; if you have a place where you can go and have a picnic with your family, it doesn't matter if it's a recession or not, you can include that in your quality of life.
Recession is when a neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours.