What Double-Dip Recession Means

Are we unknowingly in a new great depression?

Shiller:

"I use a definition of a double-dip recession that doesn't emphasize the short term. Instead, I see it as beginning with a recession in which unemployment rises to a high level and then falls at a disappointingly slow rate. Before employment returns to normal, there is a second recession. As long as economic recovery isn't complete, that's a double-dip recession, even if there are years between the declines."

"Under that definition, there has been only one serious double-dip recession in the last century — and it was serious indeed. It started with the 1929-33 recession, which was followed by a recession in 1937-38. Between those declines, the unemployment rate never moved below 12.2 percent. Those two recessions, four years apart, are now typically lumped together as one event, the Great Depression."

Fascinating.