Quote:
two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth.
This IS the
technical definition of a Recession in
Australia.
There is also a political and economic sort of differentiation between a technical Recession, which can't and won't be denied to exist by the government, and a more fuzzy "economic downturn" which is is usually more hotly debated to exist, and has less emergency measures used on it.
I have to add that the present Global Financial Crisis (known as the GFC to the Aussie gov.) was immediately taken extremely seriously by the outgoing Howard government and the incoming Rudd government, and emergency language and measurements have been put in place, and continue to be put in place, well before the expected technical Recession has actually occurred here yet.
Rudd is pouring great quantities of extra government money into Education, Health, and infrastructure projects, much beyond what he promised in the Election, and has opened up the possibility of the government going into deficit for the first time in a decade, depending on how tax income plays out over the next few years. This is hopefully to responsibly open up more jobs in the public sector while the private sector contracts.
Everyone is hoping that large and early intervention will stop any likely Recession from extending out into a Depression. Sorry, would have to look up the technical definition of a Depressioin in Australia. We haven't had one in my lifetime.
Edited, Dec 2nd 2008 7:50am by Aripyanfar