Comments on: Recessions and the Lying Liars Who Lyingly Lie About Them

By: Xrlq

Xrlq — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 15:11:40 +0000

Silly me, I thought this made it pretty clear that Q4 saw a 0.2% contraction rather than 0.6% growth:

Yup, power-house growth at a whopping 0.6% was indeed the preliminary estimate, all right, so per Beldar, anyone who didn't take preliminary estimate as gospel must have been "lying." There's only one problem with that theory: "the most current information now [then] available" was indeed subject to doubt, which doubt we now know not only to have been reasonable, but correct. What BEA previously estimated as an anemic 0.6% growth was actually a 0.2% contraction.

Help me to understand how any rational reader could have interpreted that to mean that Q4 (or any other quarter) saw "So the economy grow[-ings at 0.6% (or any positive number)" or me calling anything a recession. That Mitch managed to interpret the entire post as me calling anyone a liar - when in fact it was all about taking to task other people for making hair-trigger charges of lying - is icing on the cake.

By: Boyd

Boyd — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 05:44:17 +0000

Sorry, Jeff. Sounds to me like you’re making it up as you go along. Sorry if that wasn’t your intent, but you can only fix your own articulation. You can’t help us being stupid.

By: Xrlq

Xrlq — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 01:46:25 +0000

Christ on a crutch, doesn’t anybody read posts before commenting on them? We. Don’t. Know. If. We. Are. In. A. Recession. Or. Not. We never do, at the time. As recently as three days ago, we all thought we hadn’t experienced a single quarter of negative growth since 2001. We now know we did in 2007. We don’t know if the first quarter of 2008 had negative growth or not. It probably didn’t, but it may have; the preliminary estimates for that quarter would only have to be slightly further off than the preliminary estimates for Q4 of 2007 were.

And that’s assuming everyone actually agrees to the supposedly “agreed-to” definition of two consecutive quarters. Everyone doesn’t agree to that.

Last and least, if you are accusing me of denigrating anyone for disagreeing with anything, then you’ve completely missed the point of this post.

By: Director Mitch

Director Mitch — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 00:23:00 +0000

Does the economy suck? Yes.

Is it in “recession”. No.

But you’re a lawyer, and if the established, agreed-to definition of something isn’t what you like it to be, just change it! “Recession” now means “I don’t like the economy!” Done. Now denigrate anyone who disagrees with your new, personal definition.

For me, I am calling recession anytime I don’t get 20% returns on my investments. So the economy has been in recession for decades.

By: Xrlq

Xrlq — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:14:03 +0000

Dude, you didn’t read very carefully. Contrary the preliminary estimates released in March, the Q4 economy did not grow by 0.6%, or by any other positive number; it shrank by 0.2%. So if we were to rely on your folk definition of “recession,” we clearly had one in Q4 of last year, the only question is whether that recession continued through Q1 of this year (or whether it had to in order to constitute a “recession”).

Then again, if we were to rely on your folk definition, a single day (or hour, or minute) of negative economic growth would also be considered a “recession,” albeit an extremely short and generally harmless one.

By: Boyd

Boyd — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 04:07:32 +0000

Okay, “recession” comes from the word “recede,” “to grow less, or smaller.”

So the economy grows at 0.6% (or any positive number), and you want to call it a recession?

I suppose you get to define “black” to mean “white” if you want to.

Doesn’t make sense to me, but I’m sure you have a good reason to think things that are the opposite of each other actually mean the same thing.