Comments on: True Lies

By: Slackathor

Slackathor — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 04:29:17 +0000

We would still be in the same recession if the GDP in the third quarter did not rise above the losses in the first two quarters, and was then followed by more quarters of losses. If the quarters following the third increased, then the third quarter would mark the beginning of the recovery.

Slackathor´s last blog post..Liberalism Hits (My) Home

By: Xrlq

Xrlq — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 12:12:56 +0000

It's a meme. Working definitions come and go. NBER's is "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales," but the only lasting definition is we're in a recession if NBER says we are. Check out this list of recessions, focusing on their durations. Yes, they're all at least 6 months long. No, they don't all start or end with calendar quarters, and most of their lengths in months aren't even divisible by 3. I don't all the GDP numbers handy, but I'd be really, really surprised if the July 1981 to November 1982 recession consisted of six consecutive quarters of negative growth, as it would have to in order to fit the meme-definition of recession (as supposed to, say, two separate mini-recessions if there were one positive quarter in the middle).

By: McGehee

McGehee — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:34:01 +0000

It’s not a meme, Xrlq, it’s a criterion economists have been using for decades.

When people say things like, “If it’s not a recession, it sure feels like one,” that’s a meme.

By: Xrlq

Xrlq — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 20:17:15 +0000

The “it ain’t a recession unless GDP recedes for six months straight, and then only if those six months happen to line up with calendar quarters” meme is beyond silly. That said, the current quarter has been dismal enough to make it a pretty safe bet that we’ll end up with negative growth when it’s done.

By: McGehee

McGehee — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 19:09:51 +0000

When I took economics a recession was defined as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. The economy grew in the first two quarters of 2008.

Which means what they were saying, before the fourth quarter of 2008 ended, was not yet true. And by the way, has the fourth quarter of 2008 already ended? Did I miss Christmas and New Year's? McGehee´s last blog post..A Peek Behind the McGeheeZone.com Curtain

By: Kevin Murphy

Kevin Murphy — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 07:50:00 +0000

These same guys didn’t call a recession in 2000 until December, even though the first and third quarters had negative GDP. WOnder why they took so long?

By: Mark L

Mark L — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 21:50:57 +0000

When I took economics a recession was defined as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. The economy grew in the first two quarters of 2008. So the only way we could have been in recession is to redefine recession as two or more consecutive quarters of economic growth before two or more consecutive quarters of negative economic growth.

With that definition, we were in a recession through much of the Bush administration. Which is what these economists wish you to believe.

Of course, we would also have been in a recession in the last years of the Clinton administration, except for the fact that this new definition of recession only counts during Republican (er — Rethuglican) Presidential administrations.

Call it yet another variant of the Greater Fool Theory.

By: Phelps

Phelps — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:41:22 +0000

It's a tautology. They decide how long we have been in a recession by deciding that the trigger happened this quarter, but then you backtrack all the way back to the last time employment expanded. And the really stupid thing is that they can come back next quarter and say that the recession is already over as of now, by their own standards. The only way this works is in an Orwell dystopia run by economists. Phelps´s last blog post..NOW he likes the Constitution