THE RECESSION IS OVER!!!!!!...did anyone notice it?

That’s right people, that glooming dooming, fear inspiring R-word is over. The crash started in 2007, with little acknowledgement from myself, 2008 went off without a hitch, then all of a sudden 2009 was the year of redundancy, high unemployment, mortgage foreclosures, business’s going under and so many other thing barely worth mentioning.

According to a story on Stuff: “The recession ended in the June quarter, with the economy growing by the barest of margins, up just 0.1 per cent, according to official figures” Yes the dreaded recession that was meant to be worse than the great depression, that was supposed to keep all of us from getting jobs when entering the workforce, has ended after a mere 5 quarters...I believe a depression has to last 5 years, not quarters! So…did anyone actually notice it?


Ok so I am obviously coming at this from the angle of a student…that’s because I am a student, so no one can really blame me for my angle of opinion. Personally, I think this whole thing was a case of scare mongering. It was a psychologically driven “recession”. Basically some high up economist started telling the world that we were in recession because there was a dip in the economy, we were all doomed and banks started going under everywhere. Obviously there had to be some truth to the dip in the economy, however I don’t really see the necessity in calling it recession. This caused the world to jump into a panic! People stopped spending, shops went under, people started killing themselves and everyone loomed in an uncertain haze wondering what would happen next.

However, it made a dam good political argument! How convenient, a recession, right before the elections. Everything else got thrown out of the window and all we cared about was ‘how will the government handle the’ “economic crisis”? Not to mention stores, the ones who ‘survived’, had a great bargain line: the “RECESIONBUSTER” deal. So I have to ask what the hell happened? Was there actually a recession or did we just trick ourselves into believe there was a problem because the government and the media told us too? Tell you the truth, I think yes. They told us there was no money, so we all stopped spending, thus harming the economy. We started to get a little confidence back and stared spending, and the economy started expanding again…who’d have guessed it? (please note the sarcasm in that)

I take my own situation as an example. My workload hasn’t changed in the last two years, actually got a pay rise which, because of my student allowance, meant I had to work less hours but I was still getting the same amount of pay each week. This tricked me into thinking I was getting less and for some bazaar reason I blamed the recession. At work, because of the ‘recession’ they laid off people at work, which meant there weren’t enough people to do the job, so the rest of us were given more hours, thus earning more money. Somehow the ‘recession’ actually had me better off than before. However, because I kept hearing left, right and centre that we all needed to tighten our belts. So I did, thus saving more than before. Of course my situation, as a student with no family to support or a mortgage, contributes to this opinion, I’m interested in what you think, did the recession really effect you???? And for a bit of light relief about the recession, check out the south park episode Margaritaville. Its pretty bang on!...and funny!