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Marce Edwards is the business editor. She has been at The News Tribune for seven years and has written about technology and big businesses in the South Sound including Weyerhaeuser and Russell. Before moving to Tacoma, she worked at The Idaho Statesman in Boise. She is a Northwest native who likes to garden and refuses to use an umbrella. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and two kids.
C.R. Roberts is a Tacoma native. Before joining The News Tribune, he worked as a freelance writer and part-time cowhand on a cattle ranch in Northern Idaho. He writes about small business, personal finance and other business issues.
John Gillie writes about the aerospace and airline industries, commercial development and consumer issues. During his 30-year-tenure at The News Tribune he has covered issues as diverse as the Native American fishing rights disputes, crime and the courts, the wood products industry and energy. He lived in Tacoma with his family for 25 years, but now lives in Kent because his wife heads a five-state non-profit foundation headquartered in Ballard, and it only seemed a sensible compromise to make considering their workplaces are 40 miles apart.
Kelly Kearsley has been a business reporter at The News Tribune since 2005. She covers the Port of Tacoma and international trade. Being born and raised in Spokane she’s used to living in cities with inferiority complexes and, in fact, prefers it. Prior to working at The News Tribune, she spent three years as a reporter for The Bulletin in Bend, Oregon and another year working stints for The Associated Press and Seattle Times. She graduated from Pacific Lutheran University. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and miniature schnauzer.
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At the risk of sounding like Pollyanna spinning on a broken record, let me reiterate: We have not lately been in a recession. We are likely not in a recession. This is not what a recession looks like.
I say this thanks to a pair of contradictory notes that waited in my inbox this morning.
From the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants I read: “Sixty-eight percent of America’s adults believe the United States is heading toward a recession, and more than half (53 percent) are cutting their spending and paying down debt as a result.”
I also heard from Ken Mayland, principal with Clear View Economics. I’ve spoken to and written about Dr. Mayland before. He’s the kind of economist who spends his time with data the way other people spend time with family and food: To him, they are fundamental.
Mayland wrote: “Can you have a recession if GDP does not decline? I don’t think so. It would be unprecedented.”
So I called Mayland for a reality check. We talked about the CPA survey and other such doomsaying, fire-fanning, public-opinion outpourings.
“For goodness sakes,” he said. “We’ve taken to asking the man on the street technical questions? Are we in a recession? What is this world coming to?”
He took me back to 1982, back when a recession was actually a recession.
The unemployment rate was 9 percent. (Now it’s 5.1 percent.) The mortgage rate that March touched 17.16 percent. (Now it’s about 6 percent.) Inflation then
came in at 6.7 percent, down from 11 percent. (Now it’s about 4 percent.) Industrial production then, year-over-year, was down 3 percent. (Now it’s up 1.5 percent.)
“What the hell is the matter with people?” Mayland asked. “Are they going daft? Is it the media that may not be reporting the facts? Could politicians be pandering to the public’s fears?”
Or is it the collective breath of economists who seem to be tripping over themselves (at least on TV) to proclaim a falling sky?
Mayland said, “Economists have been faulted in the past for not making recession calls, for not anticipating recessions. A question in my mind - in order to overcompensate, are they rushing to judgement?”
Let's go back to 1980, to the George W.S. Trow essay in The New Yorker called "Within the Context of No Context." Trow talked about the TV show "Family Feud."
The logic goes like this: Say that out of 100 people asked if asparagus was animal, vegetable or mineral, 65 said mineral. That's what the survey said. That's the best answer.
But in the real world, asparagus is a vegetable. It doesn't matter what the survey said.
And this is not a recession - not yet, and maybe not at all.
