A nasty Halloween trick: recession :-(

Almost all of us knew from our daily lives that we have been in a recession for some time now. But, at least from an intellectual perspective, we needed data as evidence. And we have it:

Gross domestic product contracted at a 0.3 percent annual pace, less than forecast, a Commerce Department report showed today in Washington. ...
``The crisis really kicked up in late September,'' Ethan Harris, co-head of U.S. economic research at Barclays Capital Inc. in New York, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. ``We're going to be looking at a very unfriendly GDP number in the fourth quarter, with a drop of 2 to 4 percent.''