Double dippin'

“We’ll have double-dip recessions now and then”. Sounds like something The Sage of Omaha might throw to wide-eyed journalists at a Berkshire Hathaway annual results presentation – but this time the straight shooter is country singer Merle Hazard.

The video for his song about double-dip recessions, Double Dippin’, is an online viral hit and should make a few Friday afternoons in offices across the country go a little more swiftly.

What I like most about the song is Merle’s acceptance that perhaps we’ll just have to put up with the odd double dip now and then. Should we worry ourselves into an early grave over it?

I’ve been wondering about how worthy the efforts of economic coneheads and regulatory agencies in working out how to prevent another recession are. It has been proven time and again that markets live by cycles and bubbles that repeat whatever happens: they are born, they get big, they get too big, they burst and they leave an unholy mess for everyone to clean up. Once the memory of the horror starts to fade, cleanup momentum is lost – and a new bubble, much like the old one, is born.

Will it happen? Watch the Double Dippin’ video here and let us know your thoughts.

Until then, let’s hope the only dipping we do is of wafers into the last of the summer ice cream.