My preferred cliche is "hope for the best and prepare for the worst".Better off being an optimist than a pessimist.
This is another case where my above-mentioned cliche can be useful. As pointed out, recessions are a fact of the economic cycle (just like inclement weather, etc.). So it's better to be prepared for one than to simply not want one.Nobody wants a recession. Nobody wants to lose their job and not be able to find another one and blow through all their savings and lose their housing. Nobody wants to see that happen to people in their community. A recession has real consequences on the lives of actual people, and lots of them.The absence of a deep, prolonged recession for 15 years now has me worried. Recessions are a normal, healthy part of the economic cycle. The absence of such is in large part to blame for all the frothiness, FOMO, and entitlement that so rampant today. The system needs a good flush.
Recessions are also known to have some positive effects (such as reducing inflation, or forcing discipline on companies with poor business plans). If you can invent and implement a way to get the positive effects without the negative ones, you could win a Nobel prize.
What the "lost decade" tells us is that there are also down periods, not just up. The Boy Scouts say "be prepared" and it's a good principle (i.e., be prepared not just for ups, and not just for downs, but for whatever reality might bring).
Statistics: Posted by HanSolo — Wed Jul 10, 2024 3:13 am — Replies 51 — Views 4542
