I was at a luncheon roundtable recently of about 15 local business executives, all of us representing different industries. We were asked to comment on our own business experiences in dealing with “the recession” or what President Bush refers to as an “economic slowdown.”

The consensus was that for the most part it was business as usual. The primary effect that seemed most common was that cash flow had slowed.

I would agree with that assessment. In our company, in the first four months of the year, sales have been the best we have ever experienced. We are almost 20 per cent ahead of last year, but cash collections are actually a bit behind 2007. So the good news/bad news equation is that we have lots of receivables out there.

I’m always hyper-sensitive to such comments as “the media blows it all out of proportion.” That was a comment that I heard twice in the roundtable. In a venue such as that I keep my mouth shut because I have nothing to gain by defending the media.

The thing that people have to realize is that the “big media” are reporting macro-economics. They don’t make this stuff up. The news comes from government and financial industry sources, people who spend their lives analyzing numbers from all over the country and the world.

Dave Nielsen, owner of Big Wave Advisors in Wheaton, is a columnist for The Business Ledger. Dave spends an enormous amount of his time and energy in reviewing the research that is available in his industry. He has been predicting a recession for months now. Dave doesn’t smoke funny cigarettes and then issue opinions. He knows what he’s talking about. It’s people like Dave that the media quotes.

But, just because the American economy slips overall by 1, 2, 3 or even 5 percent, doesn’t necessarily mean everyone feels it. No one can deny the impact of gasoline and food prices or the fact that there are definitely problems in the home building industry and in real estate sales. The airline and auto industries again are facing real challenges, as they seem to every four or five years. We can’t deny the troubles of the banking and mortgage industries. These are not myths created by the media.

Advertising traditionally has been a bellwether of economic conditions. But, again we are talking about a macro view of the billions spent annually on advertising, ranging from the Internet to door hangers to telephone directories to business newspapers to television and radio. There are certain niches and areas of the country that are going to suffer more than others.

You have to separate what is bad business from a recessionary trend. The troubles experienced by the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times started with a paradigm shift, an out-of-date business model, high fixed costs and short-sighted management. The negative business cycle doesn’t help things but isn’t the primary cause of their problems.

I think that most of us in small to medium-sized businesses don’t face the same problems unless our businesses are directly serving one of the troubled sectors. The idea that this “recession” is one of specific industries rather than across the board seems to have relevance.

The last house in America has not been sold. Simple supply and demand principles will eventually turn things around. I can remember during the Carter years (1977-1981) when my wife and I borrowed money at 18 percent to remodel our kitchen. Back then it seemed like that was a trend that would last forever.

I’m not an economist, just a business journalist who has covered business cycles since 1975. I observe human behavior and history. This “economic slowdown” will pass like all the others. And let’s remember when things are good, not everyone is doing well.

Two years from now we’ll have a different president, new representatives in Congress, a changed world environment and we’ll be asking ourselves: “Recession? What recession? I chose not to participate.”