The last year has been rather financially hectic, with the Dow Jones falling from it’s 13,000 point peak to a bottom (thus far) of about 7,000 today, numerous large financial crises resulting in failures, bailouts and general panic, and an overwhelming sense from both the public and the political establishment that the economy is in rough shape. Indeed, the numbers and heuristics support this claim entirely and at this point, it seems no one is denying it. The question now sitting on everyone’s mind - literally, people from the entire spectrum, from investors and homeowners, to the unemployed and those involved in political positions - at this point is whether we’ve hit the bottom.

We see reports from the Canadian banking industry, Ben Bernanke - the chairman of the Federal Reserve, heads of all the Federal Reserve banks, and government’s around the world in the last week confirming contractions, collapses and recessions. The United Kingdom’s recent official figures marking a near 2 per cent contraction in just the last three months of 2008, with signs that things may have gotten worse since then, mark that the problem has heavily hit the Western world outside of North America, while other European countries are passing large stimulus and bailout packages, assisting in damaged industries and still today announcing large layoffs and income contractions. Asian economies are not in much better condition, marking their dependence on high trade and exports towards the West in many industries, particularly the heavy hit automotive industry.

But the question stands - are we at the bottom, realistically, and markets and the media are just catching up to old news? A question that editorials and publications have been asking since this recession began to hit the general public near the end of last year. Many of the reports speak of 2008’s performance, and businesses are just beginning their first quarter of 2009 report cycles - clearly, there’s some stickiness between what the media is reporting and what is occurring today. This stickiness is not absolute - Ben Bernanke’s reports come in ‘real time’ for lack of a better term, he speaks of the economy as he’s watching it unfold, with a level of insider information not seen by the general public or the media, and Bernanke is reporting today that the U.S. economy is unlikely to recover within the next two years, saying things look worse now than they did 3 months ago.

The answer, in this case, seems to be that there’s no quick answer. In some ways, it appears the international economy, or at least the economy in the United States is recovering - for with interest rates at remarkably low numbers, and political and social policies rolling in to place to return to prior levels of lending, it seems investment - both publicly and privately is on the rise, or will be shortly - and who’s to say public policy isn’t a primary variable in economic forecasting? Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve - and world renowned economist - Alan Greenspan suggests that the short term nationalization and national assistance towards the banking establishment is indeed the best way to restore the cycle of money in the economy, and this is exactly what we’re doing.

Drifting away from the U.S. economy though, many international economies are feeling the effects of the U.S. economy’s end-of-last-year collapse in what appears to be a lagged echo - exactly what many economists expected. Fears propagate around the world that these echo-crashes may have devastating effects on a significant economy, such as one in Europe or first-world economic Asia which could start the whole mess again.

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