McClatchy:

Sex trade is thriving in Costa Rica

Translation:

Economic crisis forces women to sell their bodies in Costa Rica

The happy double entendre talk--"a stimulus effect on Costa Rica's famous sex-tourism industry", "popular prostitution hot spots", "Costa Rica's position as an international hub for prostitution" eventually gives way (perhaps the reporter got his rocks off and decided to do his job) to some harsh realities:

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When I first moved to my current digs, I dealt with my depression and the wealth of window space in the new place by planting found seeds. The second year I had this:

I'm looking out on my eight garden beds in the back yard. The strawberry and asparagus bed is wintering-over just fine. I cut the asparagus ferns down a week ago, when they finally turned brown, and fell over. Now, they are ready for sending up new stalks, which I will be able to harvest this year. This past year, each crown sent up at least twelve stalks, so, I expect this year to be a real good year for them. I just pulled and started dehydrating the parsley that I had growing with the asparagus. The strawberries seem to not realize that it is winter. I picked a good, hardy variety, and they are green, and still sending out new shoots, which I need to snip back every few weeks.

The strict definition of "recession" is:

a decline in a country's gross domestic product (GDP), or negative real economic growth, for two or more successive quarters of a year.

Bush claims that he inherited a recession and also disputes that we are now in a recession.

As both cannot be true, it seems that "recession" is not a macroeconomic term, rather, a political one.   Read more…

You guys all know that economics make my head hurt, but this seemed pretty important.

Bottom line

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