Recession

For the past 23 years, honoring restoration projects has been a tradition for Baltimore Heritage, the city-wide preservation organization. This year's awards ranged from excellence in the adaptive use of the old Greyhound bus terminal to the renovation of a small 1890s commercial structure at 21 West Hughes Street in Federal Hill. Despite recession, "we were kind of surprised to find a good amount of high-quality projects," the preservation group's president, Fred B. Shoken, observed.The awards showed the increasingly important role institutions are playing in preservation efforts.

Robert R. Neall, the rising-star Republican executive of Anne Arundel County, remarked the other day that if the recession goes on until mid-1992 or later, "even Mickey Mouse could beat George Bush." He talked gloomily of layoffs and see-through buildings and an economy with no signs of zip.Now Mr. Neall's forebodings are confirmed by an ABC-Washington Post poll that shows Mr. Bush's popularity slipping from a Desert Storm high of 68-20 percent over an undesignated Democratic nominee to a 47-37 percent margin.

Over the weekend I asked several people -- some local, some national -- for their views on the length of the business slowdown. Here, plus a few print opinions, is what I found:"This recession is just about over." (John Mueller, economist, conversing before appearing on "Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser."). . . "No economic recovery before 1992." (Ed Hyman, economist, in Barron's, dated today). . . "Business is still slow; many people are out of work and prices remain high. It doesn't look so good."

In a state of the union address shadowed by the clouds of war in the Persian Gulf and recession at home, President Bush found reassurance last night in the prospect of sustained cooperation with the Soviet Union. With obvious relish, he told the Congress that he had been given "representations" that some Soviet troops would be withdrawn from the Baltics and Moscow would move away from violence to reopen dialogue with rebellious republics.His dramatic announcement, coming after consultations with the new Soviet foreign minister, Alexander A. Bessmertnykh, emboldened Mr. Bush to talk of a continuing effort by the two superpowers to build "a more peaceful future for all mankind."

Surviving a layoff and its aftermath So, you've survived the ax. But it's not exactly relief you're feeling. It's more like guilt and anxiety. While managers can help alleviate some of the swirling emotions among survivors by being as truthful and thorough as possible in explaining the layoff criteria and procedure, workplace experts say many bosses fail to do that. John Owen, branch manager at staffing firm Robert Half International's Baltimore office, offers some advice on how you can take charge of a bleak situation.

Washington.-- Joseph Schumpeter, the iconoclastic economist of an earlier day, thought capitalist economies needed a good, cleansing recession now and then.Economists think like this. They're dismal oracles who have the unique skill of removing themselves from the travails of the human race and audaciously telling us suffering is not only good, but also absolutely necessary at times. Their sackcloth gospel makes them unpopular when times are good and despised when times are bad.And, yet, they often go to the painful, disturbing truth about recessions: We must adjust, or fall further behind.

IT IS PROBABLE, but not yet certain, that the United States is in a recession.Recent statistics show that the real gross national product dropped at an annual rate of four-tenths of 1 percent in the July-September quarter. Last week, primarily because of a jump in auto sales, the Federal Reserve Board revised its figures upward, showing a slight rise for the third quarter.But the basic trend in the overall economy right now can be described as wiggling around zero.A consensus forecast of 50 leading economists calls for real GNP to decline again in the current quarter as well as in the first quarter of 1991, which would technically make it a recession.

I hope I am not the only reader who can see through the proposals to extend tax cuts for the rich. The logical problem is that if tax cuts stimulate small businesses and hardy entrepreneurship, wouldn't we have seen it by now? Like during the year 2010 when there was no estate tax whatsoever? How many dot-coms did the Steinbrenner heirs start? If cutting taxes for the rich is the way to grow the economy, then there would be no recession. For the record I don't think there should be a tax cut for anybody.

WASHINGTON -- Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan raised the possibility yesterday of a brief U.S. recession, but stressed the long-term health of the economy in terms that the financial markets took as a signal that no imminent cuts in interest rates were planned.Commenting on an abrupt economic slowdown, which he called "very pronounced," Mr. Greenspan acknowledged that "as a consequence of the sluggish economic outlook, the probabilities, some of my colleagues have indicated, of a recession have edged up, as indeed one would expect."

The ongoing economic slowdown in Maryland should be mild and brief compared with the 1982 recession, according to a panel of regional forecasters.Maryland's economy "will begin its upturn during the summer," said Robert N. Schoeplein, research director for the Maryland Department of Economic and Employment Development."