People all around me seem to be cutting back on discretionary spending. These aren’t lwn subscribers, just normal people leading average lives, but I extrapolate that lwn subscribers are in the same boat.
Even here in red state territory that seems to be the general vibe.
(The recession started in March, well before 9/11, but the attempt to encourage shopping to deal with the perceived problem was a post-9/11 thing.)
The Bush recession is often perceived as longer and deeper than it was because of the poor distribution of gains (in part due to the tax burden shift of the Bush tax cuts) of the expansion that started in late 2001 and ended with the Great Recession.