Panel Sees Odds of U.S. Recession Rising - Bloomberg

The two-year-old U.S. recovery’s staying power may be diminishing as consumers and the government pare spending, say five of the nine economists on the academic panel that dates recessions.

“This economy is really balanced on the edge,” Harvard University economics professor Martin Feldstein, a member of the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, said yesterday in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Surveillance Midday” with Tom Keene. “There’s now a 50 percent chance that we could slide into a new recession. Nothing has given us much growth.”

This is why cutting spending during a recession is always a bad idea. The government needs to spend it’s was through a recession which puts money in the hands of consumers to spend which in turn fuels economic recovery. Naturally the idiots in DC and their rich, corporate benefactors don’t realize this. Whereas they should see increased taxes coupled with spending as a smart investment for the future that would increase their profits long term, they instead see it as a punishment and theft of their money. Dumbasses!