Millions of workers have already been facing their own personal recession for a long time, whether or not the classic definition of a national recession has been met, or found, by the official prognosticators. But, speaking of prognosticators, my friends at the Center for Economic and Policy Research have just released a paper entitled "What We’re In For: Projected Economic Impacts of the Next Recession." Why listen to what CEPR says? Well, for one, if the world had listened to CEPR, and, in particular Dean Baker, rather than the morons on Wall Street and on the flickering screen, we would have realized a housing bubble was a serious threat long time ago.

    So, CEPR says:

Along with a sharp rise in unemployment, a recession in 2008 would eventually result in 4.7 to 10.4 million more men, women, and children living in poverty, at least 4.2 million people losing health-insurance coverage, and a drop in the inflation-adjusted median family income of between $2,000 and $3,700 per year. The estimated effects would extend as far as 2010 or 2011, depending on the severity of the downturn.

    Who would get hit the hardest?:

Again, racial minorities would bear a disproportionate share of the economic hardships. Blacks, for example, would account for 1.3 million of the total 5.8 million worker increase in unemployment. If the historical pattern repeats itself, the labor market would not likely begin to recover until 2011.

    Think of that. We could be looking at three years of pretty bad times–on top of the pressure already being felt by millions of workers who are now being hit with rising costs like gasoline, dwindling health care, no measurable increase in wages, and, certainly, no pensions.

    And, so tell me why we should listen to the same talking heads who continued to marvel at the rising value of homes and continued to revel in consumer spending fueled by the false promise of ever-continued rising home values?