Recession or Depression?

I thought of tasting the bitter part first and keeping the sweets for tha later half. That is why I have chosen to discuss the economic downturns first.
Many of us come across the terms "recession" and "depression" quite often and given the present scenario you may meet them more often than anything else. But what is the basic difference between these two haunting words or is there any difference at first place?
The answer is YES.
Recession can be defined in many ways by different economists but the most common one is :
When the GDP growth rate of an economy is negative for more than two or more consecutive quarters.
But the bigger devil is depression which is more severe form of recession.
Economic Depression is said to be in picture when recession lasts for more than 2 years or the real GDP decline is more than 10%. But again these two terms are very subjective and it is really difficult to come up with a pin point defnition. But as far as common mass is concerned the above mentioned definitions should suffice.
Here is the list of big scale economic downturns in the 20th century and onwards :

• Panic of 1901 : It was limited to the crash of New York Stock Exhange(NYSE).
• Panic of 1907 : It is also known as 1907 Banker's Panic and again the victim was NYSE.
• Wall street crash of 1929, followed by the Great Depression : The largest and the most important economic depression in the history of mankind.
• 1973 oil crisis : Oil prices soared leading to the stock market crash of 1973-74.
• Secondary banking crisis of 1973-75 : The devil puts his foot deep in U.K.
• 1980s Latin american debt crisis : Began in Mexico in 1982.
• Black Monday, 1987 : The largest one day percentage drop in stock market history.
• United States savings and loan crisis, 1989-91 : Commonly referred to as S&L crisis.
• 1990, Japanese asset price bubble collapse : It contributed to what Japanese refer to as "The Lost Decade".
• Swedish banking crisis, 1990s : Worst economic crisis in Sweden since the 1930s.
• Finnish banking crisis of 1990s
• Black Wednesday, 1992-93 : Spculative attack on currencies in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.
• 1994 economic crisis in Mexico : Speculative attack and default on Mexican debt.
• 1997 Asian Financial Crisis : Devaluation and banking crises across Asia.
• 1998 Russian Financial Crisis : Catalysed by Asian Financial Crisis.
• 2001, Bursting of dot-com bubble : Speculation concerning internet companies crashed.
• Financial Crisis of 2007-10 : Worst financial crisi since the Great Depression.

Wait for the next post to have some brief idea about some of the above mentioned economic crisis.

Bye.