Recession, Depression, What's in a Name?

Bloomberg has a depressing (pardon the pun) piece on their site this morning that draws on remarks from half a dozen or more prominent economists that together suggest that if we are not in a depression now (and we are not) then we certainly are facing the real possibility of one. Key quote:

Combined with collapsing house prices, the free-fall in the stock market will destroy $23 trillion worth of U.S. wealth, reckons Lawrence Lindsey, a former senior White House official who now heads his own consulting company in Arlington, Virginia.

To put this in perspective, world GDP in 2008 was about $60 trillion U.S.. So U.S. losses in wealth alone amount to almost 40% of world GDP. And we're not done yet. Debt deflation is a real possibility, unemployment is growing as fast as it ever has and we still have no real clue where all of the toxic assets are buried. If we are not staring into the abyss, we are surely sneaking a peak at it.

So are we in a depression? Stay tuned.