Downturns, of course, are the best time to buy properties inexpensively.
Nothing like that happened during the severe downturns of the 1970s and 1980s.
"They had downturns of different sizes, but they were all negative".
And downturns, of course, also mean more people in need of help.
EVEN after a modest stock market rebound last year, the downturns of the last decade have left portfolios bruised.
Until the Lehman failure the recession was pretty typical of the modest downturns of the post-war period.
Even with the market downturns of the first half of May, foreign ownership of conglomerates is 48.8percentt.
In downturns of years past, law firms exploited corporate failures and bitter, protracted lawsuits to keep busy and keep billing.
But, as the FT's Chris Giles points out, the downturns of the '90s and '80s are harsher in terms of employment.
In a recent blog post, however, I wondered whether this dynamic hadn't been a persistent feature of rich economies since the disinflationary downturns of the early 1980s.
In the downturns of the 1980s and early 1990s, many millions of workers were bundled into early retirement or on to disability schemes.
