The recession began on a Monday with a junior analyst in an obscure New Boston brokerage. At 9:32:07 he found a quarter-point dip on a hyperderivitive of a tertiary economic indicator. A cursory check found similar dips in adjacent verticals. All his mathematical and statistical training told him the dip was a fluctuation, a bit of background noise that had no real effect on the economy. But sometimes, he’d always believed, a man has to go with his gut.

By 9:42:23 he had posted a commentary on his firm’s blog titled, Are We in a Recession. “The major indicators are going up. But is the market headed for the second moon or the void between the stars?” At 9:45:07, the feed curator of Stockman Financial News scanned the post and ordered it moved it to the top, declaring it, well-written, authoritative without being megalomaniacal, and sexy the way the girl next door looks, the more you look at her. The assistant protested that the post was predicated on faulty statistical assumptions, and besides bravado in its opinion, had very little to do with actual physical sex appeal. To this the boss conceded that the sexual metaphor was too far from reality to be taken seriously as an argument, but concluded that he, the boss, was in fact the boss and hence the only person really entitled to opinions in this office. At 9:48:24 the article went up.

The posting had the effect of a wedding cam on a nuptial bed. By 10:00 sharp, Anara’s top financial firms had their best minds scrutinizing the numbers. By 10:17:01 a flurry of supporting editorials had appeared on the feeds of most of Anara’s financial press. By then, more words were only so many more viewers to the voyeuristic party, or to put it more precisely, only so many decimal points in a hypertrophic tertiary derivative view of the market. Investors had long since (meaning since about 10:09) started unloading stocks in favor of bonds. By 10:20:31 all major corporations on Anara were considering layoffs to placate their shareholders. Lists of potential layoff candidates were available by 10:26:58.

At 10:38:18 the junior analyst of the New Boston brokerage (now promoted to ‘Special Advisor to the Firm’) was busy working on an editorial for the Anaran News Network wherein he advised the consumers of Anara to be wary. The hidden hand has brought down the terrible swift sword. Don’t buy big ticket items. Don’t’ buy durable goods (defined by the government as anything designed to last more than two hours). Really, just stop spending money. Predictably, the economy slumped into a recession.