RECESSION -- Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the joint economic committee, said that he has begun to worry about the threat of a recession.

“I think we are at a moment of economic crisis stemming from four key areas: falling housing prices, lack of confidence in creditworthiness, the weak dollar and high oil prices,” Schumer said. “Each of these problems alone would be enough of a threat to our economic well-being. But taken together, they are essentially the four horsemen of economic crisis.”

The definition of recession as defined by WIKI:

Recession is a decline in any country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), or negative real economic growth, for two or more successive quarters of a year. However, this definition is not universally accepted. The American National Bureau of Economic Research defines a recession more ambiguously as “a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months.” A recession may involve simultaneous declines in coincident measures of overall economic activity such as employment, investment, and corporate profits. Recessions may be associated with falling prices (deflation), or, alternatively, sharply rising prices (inflation) in a process known as stagflation. A severe or long recession is referred to as an economic depression.

[CNN MONEY]