wearmanyhats

We sat and talked over coffee, sharing news about this person that we knew, and what the movie was that he was attending later that day.

“So you’ve been reading those financial e-mails I sent over?” I asked, smiling.

“Yes, and it sounds very scary out there.”

“Well,  I don’t things are all that bad.  This recession might just turn around soon,” I sipped my coffee slowly.

“Recession?” he asked in surprise. “Why, you’re not in any recession now! This country’s slipped into a depression, and you just don’t know it.  It’s going to be a while before anyone else does either, but that’s where you are.”

His reaction surprised me.  He lived through the Great Depression, the only depression in the past 100 years.  For the most part, the government has been pretty good at keeping us out of one. Still, his words puzzle me.  Is there something telling him that we’ve entered a depression that someone less experienced wouldn’t know?

The agency that actually identifies recessions and depressions doesn’t usually do it until about a year after we are fully into such a cycle.   By the time we are notified that we are in the middle of a depression, we may be fully half-way through it.

The Old Man is an active reader of Martin Weiss’ newsletter, and I’ve disagreed with Weiss a time or two.  Weiss believes that we are in a depression already. I wonder if The Old Man is influenced more by his reading than by what he sees around him.

There are reasons I say that the country is still in a recession and not a depression.  My thermometer for the nation’s fever are truck drivers.  If they are out of work, freight isn’t moving because people aren’t buying.  In December, after the Christmas rush was over, drivers suddenly stopped dead.  Companies that were constantly looking for people to train as drivers stopped hiring.  Signs saying, “Drivers Wanted!” were taken down from the sides of roads.

Suddenly, the work began to trickle in again.  The companies hired on a couple of new guys, but not many.  Truck drivers are notorious for jumping job to job.  In this economy, they weren’t jumping for that greener side of the fence.  They had a job that paid, and when one man asked for a raise at his local place of employment, the boss told him that 5000 truckers had recently been laid off.  He might, too, if he asked again.

Still, the freight slowly begins to move faster.  One trucker, sick of being away from his family after three weeks, went home to stay with them for a while.  The boss didn’t call because the man’s tractor needed fixing.  But the unspoken message was,”If the tractor had been working, I don’t care how long you have been out.  You better be on the road when I tell you.”  Up until that time, drivers could ask for time off and there was no squabble.  Now when the boss calls, you better jump.

There are certain professions where the workers tend to do a bit more of what they want, rather than what the boss needs.  Auto body technicians and painters are one of those.  There is such a shortage of skilled men, that usually if a technician asks for time off, and he is a good employee, you just let him go for that time.  Now, men are working for lower wages, looking for work, or staying put at their jobs.  Recessions have a way of doing that to people.  And watching these kinds of workers make is a great way to get the idea of a nation’s health.

Right now the nation has a slight fever.   It seems to be feeling better than it was a few months ago.  If the price of gas doesn’t go up too fast, it could recover.  We’ll see how then next few months go.

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