Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"It's really not correct. There are actually some businesses that do better. Now, this is not to say that they want recessions, but it's simply due to the nature of their products. I think this makes sense. When you have recession, people are going to change some of their spending habits. For example, typically we see during a recession people buy fewer new cars. That means they're keeping their existing cars longer, and that probably means they're going to need more repairs on those existing cars. So one area we see that tends to do better during a recession is car repair shops. Also look at construction. Construction often shifts during a recession from building new homes to people staying in their homes and perhaps remodeling. So remodeling may go up. Suppliers in general of lower-cost products will find their sales improve as buyers try to cut costs by going to lower-cost items. So the point here is that people will make changes to cope with an economic slowdown, and when they do make these changes, that can actually help some businesses."