Is a recession a good thing?

The Sunday Times recently carried an article about the risk of recession in Spain should the ECB raise rates. According to the quoted economist, a rate rise would be a policy mistake that could push Spain back into recession.

I have nothing against the economist quoted in the article. Indeed, it could have been any number of economists making the same comment.  In my view, they would all be wrong. Not about the recession, but about it being a policy mistake. It is not clear when, exactly, it happened, but over the course of Greenspan’s tenure as head of the Fed, the idea that interest rate policy was there to finesse (or even eradicate) the business cycle became more and more commonly accepted. At the merest hint of weaker growth, monetary policy was eased. This created an entirely new type of cycle: Weake...