Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

This morning on a segmant of MSNBC's (GE) "Morning Joe," former General Electric CEO Jack Welch said he doesn't believe there'll be any recession.

A recession is defined as two or more straight quarters where the gross domestic product (GDP) declines. Considering it has actually grown healthily over the last two quarters, Welch could very well be right. For the second quarter of 2007, the GDP grew by 3.8 percent, while the third quarter did even better at 4.9 percent.

Mostly based on the assumption that credit problems will continue on for the duration of 2008, some have already concluded a recession is inevitable.

Welch said: “No, I don't think we’re going to hit recession, but it’s going to feel like it. Things are slowing down dramatically, as everyone knows. But I think we’ll weather this thing and the global economy will keep us alive. So, we will not have a technical recession ...”

Others like Brian Wesbury and Robert Stein, economists for First Trust Advisors, L.P., say when examining the underlying fundamentals of the economy, the idea of a recession is unwarranted. Things like loose interest rates and taxes remaining low are main examples. They also believe the worst of the subprime mortgage write-downs is past, and so things should be leveling off.

Take that along with Welch's input that the "global economy will keep us alive," does give a strong argument for things not being as bad as being conveyed in the media.

To me, the only real unknown is whether or not the majority of the subprime losses are really behind us. That may be the defining issue connected to the recession, and the truth is nobody really knows. Until people holding mortgages make decisions on whether to keep paying on their houses or not, it is up in the air.

If that is indeed largely behind us, which is quite possible, we probably won't see a recession. The problem for a lot of business leaders is they're acting like it's a reality, when it hasn't been proven yet.

As always, we need to be cautious of the hype and purveyors of fear. Fear can generate a lot of interest, but we still must run our businesses based on proven facts and not emotional roller costers.

In the end, either way we're going to have a slowdown. What we choose to call it really doesn't matter, even if the technical definition of a recession comes into being and the headlines everywhere blaze it out.

We need to run our businesses in 2008 like there will be a real slowdown, because that is one thing the existing data confirm. At this time it looks like it'll be more mild than originally thought, but it will still be slower than it has been. We have to run things accordingly.