Are we in a Recession?

Let me preface this post by saying that I am not an economist and that I won't be regurgitating statistics and arguing the definition of the term. There are plenty of economists and websites out there to do just that. They will argue to ends about what specific indicators prove that we actually are in a recession and then what the actual percentages of those indicators need be for it to actually qualify as one. I as an everyday person will just say that to me it feels like one.

Most of the people I know(including me) that are in the job market are just not finding jobs or if they are not the ones they want or their searches have been far longer then anticipated. These aren't people that you would think would have a tough time. They are all well educated most with masters degrees but yet the jobs just don't seem to be available. To add to this incomes seem to be going down not up at least for all intents and purposes they are flat. People today are not making much more then they were in the 90's while the cost of so many different things around us have doubled and tripled.

I don't think it matters if the numbers of the particular indicators are right or not. I think a recession is just as much psychological as it is economic. Psychologically speaking, in my opinion, we are in a recession. People are holding on to their cash like almost never before. People are afraid to make large purchases, to invest, etc... Confidence in the stock market is lower then ever, even the confidence in banks, usually trusted entities, is as low as it can be. A long time ago someone told me that the American economy goes through cycles, about every four to five year we have a downturn about every eight to twelve years a recession and about every twenty five years a depression. I think in a free economy this would probably true. In our convoluded fed controlled, SEC regulated world the cycles still are there but I think the ups are now lower and the down periods longer. I think the last few years were an abomination where a system was regulated on one end vis a vis the fed but not the other end with no regulation of the mortgage industry and more importantly the mortgage securities industry. The fatheads at large institutional firms, banks, investment banks and brokerage firms got rich while no one did anything to regulate them. The fed chairman at the time Greenspan kept warning that the growth in real estate was dangerous but did nothing really to curb it.

We are in a recession... and it may be a long time before we crawl out of this one.