Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the

economic dimensions of our lives. I'm your host, Richard Wolfe. Today's program is going to be

dedicated to one particular topic, recession. It's what we're in now. It's what the country

is fearful about. It's what we've been talking about across the mass media. And it's time

for some careful analysis of what this is

and where it is taking us.

So let's begin.

Recession.

Here's the simple definition.

It's when the economy turns down, usually suddenly, over a very few number of weeks and maybe a few months,

large numbers of people are either unemployed or forced to take part-time work or finding

their jobs in danger. Small businesses go out of business. Medium and large businesses find their

activities shrinking. They can't produce as much. They can't sell as much. Because of all

of that, the tax revenues received by local communities and by the country as a whole, start shrinking, which means that

the government is pinched and can't do what it normally would like to do and is asked

to do by the people. In other words, it's an economic downturn. In fact, the word recession

has lots of synonyms.

Downturn, bust, crash, crisis, depression.

I could go on.

Why is it that we have so many words?

Why is it that I'm talking about recession?

Well, recession is part of the capitalist economic system. It's as old as capitalism itself, three, four hundred years if you count the beginning of capitalism in

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