A crazy world

The United States is in a recession.

How do we know? Because the organization that decides these things — the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) — recently said the recession started in December 2007. Also, it was announced last Friday that the number of jobs in the US fell by 533,000 in November, the largest monthly fall in 34 years.

Germany is in a recession, too. How do we know? Because gross domestic product (GDP) fell in the second and third quarters of this year.

But you wouldn't have known there is a recession if you had been in the centre of Munich on Saturday. I have never seen so many shoppers in the city before. And the new Apple store was so busy on its first day that you had to queue to enter in the morning. Even at 18.00 the store was so crowded that you could hardly move about inside.

How can we explain this spending boom in the middle of a recession? Answer: I don't know. Better answer: it's a crazy world. OK, Munich is not typical of Germany, but even so, the scenes on Saturday were crazy, crazy, crazy.

And if the world is crazy, what is the solution? The same as when people are crazy, says The Economist. The business and politics magazine has long had the best advertising campaigns. Now, it has done it again: