{"id":822,"date":"2010-08-26T22:29:29","date_gmt":"2010-08-27T03:29:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/?p=822"},"modified":"2010-08-26T22:34:02","modified_gmt":"2010-08-27T03:34:02","slug":"false-dichotomy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/?p=822","title":{"rendered":"False Dichotomy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Megan McArdle writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The economy is at best heading into a soft patch; at worst it is going into the second dip of a double-dip recession.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is not the worst possibility, rather the middle one of three. McArdle’s dichotomy should be a trichthotomy, split three ways (not a ‘trichotomy’: that would be the act of splitting hairs). As some of her commenters point out, we may be well on our way into a full-scale depression. I have seen no sign of bottoming out, much less recovery, either temporary (in a double dip) or permanent. To put it another way, she and others have wondered whether this recession will be V-shaped (short and sharp, which is good), U-shaped (protracted, and not-so-good), or W-shaped (double-dip, even worse). There are other letters in the alphabet, and other characters in the HTML character set. Rather than one of these:<\/p>\n

V – U – W<\/p>\n

I wonder whether we might be looking at a drop to a permanently lower level, with no recovery:<\/p>\n

L<\/p>\n

or perhaps a continuous downhill slide:<\/p>\n

\\<\/p>\n

or perhaps a steep drop with no visible bottom:<\/p>\n

⌉<\/p>\n

As with ice cream, a double dip is a pleasant prospect, compared to many of the alternatives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Megan McArdle writes: The economy is at best heading into a soft patch; at worst it is going into the second dip of a double-dip recession. This is not the worst possibility, rather the middle one of three. McArdle’s dichotomy should be a trichthotomy, split three ways (not a ‘trichotomy’: that would be the act […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=822"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":833,"href":"http:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822\/revisions\/833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}