If you were an investment banker, the chances are you’ve already lost your job. If you were something less than a Master of the Universe, yours may have disappeared without a splash on CNN.

Is there any consolation for losing a job or a career, even in an economy on the brink of a slump? Paul Graham makes a great case for it.

“Our bodies weren’t designed to eat the foods that people in rich countries eat, or to get so little exercise. There may be a similar problem with the way we work: a normal job may be as bad for us intellectually as white flour or sugar is for us physically.”

But don’t jobs and food actually go together?

“The root of the problem is that humans weren’t meant to work in such large groups. … Though they’re statistically abnormal, startup founders seem to be working in a way that’s more natural for humans.”

Paul Graham — who is a venture capitalist — is right. You can buck the system and you owe it to yourself to make the attempt.

Incidentally, a recession is a great time to go it alone. Venture capitalists have money burning a hole in their vaults, there’s a surfeit of experts going cheap, and opportunities for anyone with a great idea or a new approach.

Innovation is at a premium during a downturn. Many of the biggest names in corporate America began in a garage during a recession when there was little else to do.

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Each succeeding generation seems to have to make that choice, depending on the business cycle and the severity of booms and downturns.

In the present world recession the context is so severe that it’s become a crisis in both the financial markets and the real economy. Many governments are having to nationalize part or all of their banking systems. Financial services never seemed so brittle.

Is that really the case though? In a well-argued article, The world needs Up-To-A-Pointism, John Evans suggests that by staying within the boundaries where governments and free markets work best, the world would be a much more stable place to live and do business.

Although mostly mutually-exclusive, the interface between regulation and free markets could be made to operate more efficiently, to the benefit of both.

The American investment bank Goldman Sachs, which is currently enjoying a “flight to quality” in its business, believes that America will lead Britain and Europe out of the credit crunch.

In many ways that’s a statement of the obvious since the U.S. economy is usually nine months to a year ahead of its transatlantic rivals/partners. And whereas Ben Bernanke at the FED and the Government in Washington have pulled out all the stops to limit the damage, Britain and the eurozone have been slow to react and have concentrated their fire on the dangers of inflation.

David Viniar, Chief Financial Officer at Goldman’s said, “March was the low point up until now, but if I try and predict the future, I am likely to be wrong.

“Do I think we are through? No, I don’t, but I think there is a lot behind us. Now there is less concern about systemic liquidity risk. People are focused individual investments and credit.”

The real danger now appears to be inflation, driven by oil and food prices. That would be reduced by a worldwide downturn. Experience tells us though, that once inflation sets in, it’s a long hard slog to get rid of it, simply because the remedy is recession itself.

In the U.S. and Britain a recession is defined as when the data records two consecutive quarters of negative growth. So we can only call it a recession when we’re six months in — and then it’s usually already over.

It’s said that this definition was deliberately put about by advisers to President Johnson in the 1960s to allow him wriggle room when events were not neat and symmetrical — which is the the most likely case.

For example, if within a six-month period one month bucks the trend and shows a slight positive number, it can’t be a recession no matter how bad conditions are across the economy. And the quarters down have to synch with the “official” quarters from January through December. Different combinations of months don’t count apparently, even though they could skew the result.

However, we know that because of population and productivity growth, the U.S. needs to expand by about 2.5pc just to keep unemployment from rising.

We should forget the official definition because even flat growth is negative for the economy and almost everybody in it, and that means less than 2.5pc.

Everything points to conditions being much worse than that right now.

We could just as easily define it as six months of high gold prices — just like the present.

Ronald Reagan had a stab with, “A recession is when your neighbor loses his job.”

Ominously he added, “A depression is when you lose your’s.”