We're Officially In A Recession? Tell Me Something I Don't Know!

This blog originally appeared on AtlantaWomanMag.com.

Slowdown. Unusual time. Difficult headwind. All terms used (by President Bush) to describe what we’v e all been trying not to think about – recession.

After hemming and hawing for almost a full year, The National Bureau of Economic Research has declared that not only are we in a current recession, but that we’ve been in one since December 2007! It’s so comforting to finally have someone speak the truth we’ve all been living with for the past six months or more. Now we’ll have no more pundits spout out phrases such as “recession-like conditions” when asked about the state of the nation’s economy.

I do realize that it takes organizations such as the bureau quite a while to make a call like this – what really makes me chuckle is that economists have been so loathe to use the term. It seemed to me that commentators on NPR and the like were almost afraid to use it for fear of sending yet another message of financial doom and gloom to the masses.

I find it mildly amusing, and perhaps strategically timed, that this announcement was made after Black Friday, which, according to various reports, was actually better than last year in terms of retail sales. Recession, schmession! Despite the fact that we are paying more for milk, more of us are getting laid off and unemployment benefits are at some of the highest levels ever, the economic state of the union can’t prevent us from camping out in front of Best Buy Thanksgiving night so that we can get our hands on a coveted $300 laptop. (I kid you not – my brother works there, and saw many tents pitched when his store opened its doors at the ungodly hour of 4 a.m.) Of course, this rush to buy may be attributed to the need to get the best deal possible, as it feels like we are all quickly running out of cash.

Needless to say, we are probably all in need of a good laugh.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m feeling down, I turn to the The Daily Show. Jon knows you may not have a Harvard MBA like President Bush, so he translates W's outlook into language we can all understand.

John Hodgman uses a time helmet (You know we’re in a recession if he can’t afford a time machine!) to see if we're currently in a recession and bats around economic semantics.

Decisions, Decisions

This blog originally appeared on http://www.AtlantaWomanMag.com.

Bailout. Recession. Crash. Depression. Election. While these words do have some meaning to me, as a full-time working mother, their trickle-down effects are having far more of an immediate impact on my family than the headlines and sometimes confusing explanations of partisan pundits would have us try to believe. And this confusion has only resulted in more confusion and anxiety at the regular guy (aka Joe the Plumber) level.

I'm faced with gas prices that are prohibitive, forcing me to decide whether to make the hour-long trip to the grandparents, or conserve fuel so that I can definitely get to work next week. A gallon of milk upward of $5 or $6 - or more if, like me, you opt for organic. The impending gloom that my natural gas bill will bring as the weather gets cooler and our house gets warmer. And the overall fear that my bank - in which what's left of my savings is placed - will go out of business.

And during all this mess, I am supposed to figure out who I want to supposedly get us out of this mess? Fat chance. I've got dinner to assemble, laundry to do, preschool runs to make and a profession to keep up. I'm hoping that I'll have time to make an "educated decision" based on more than just the latest SNL skits with Tina Fey.

My husband, who is still not sure if he will vote, keeps asking how I am going to choose. I vaguely answer, "research," each time. But what, really, does this mean?

It means, go to the worldwide Web, of course! Since everything I've ever read on the Internet is true, I'll trust its resources to help me make an educated decision.

The Candidate Calculator on vajoe.com helps me to realize that Ralph Nader is the man for me - with Barack Obama running a distant third behind the Green Party's Cynthia McKinney. But wait, didn't Nader drop out of the race ages ago?

Online-tech-tips.com offers a number of sites to visit to help me make this important decision, since "This election will probably be one of the toughest for people to decide who to vote for because of the sheer number of candidates, especially the number of star power candidates like Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, and Rudolph Giuliani." Obviously not the most updated of pages. But seriously, it does list a number of helpful sites such as:

* 2008 Presidential Election Candidates on the Issues
http://www.2decide.com/table.htm

* Project Vote Smart
http://www.votesmart.org

* Connect 2 Elect
http://www.connect2elect.com

And while some may be more up-to-date than others, they all offer helpful insight into the issues each candidate stands behind.

It's no secret that other moms are facing the same who to vote for dilemma. There is a lively discussion going on between Atlanta moms at MomsLikeMe.com. Issues of greatest importance seem to be taxes, health care and education.

I definitely have more research to do. Thank goodness for Google!