Comments | the_recession: We aren't such good company for Misery atm...

kayjayuu in the_recession

We aren't such good company for Misery atm...

Mar 23, 2009 17:56

The US Misery Index

(Current) Misery Index (8.34) = Unemployment rate (8.1) + Inflation rate (0.24)The misery index was initiated by economist Arthur Okun, an adviser to President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960's. It is simply the unemployment rate added to the inflation rate. It is assumed that both a higher rate of unemployment and a worsening of ( Read more... )

unemployment rate, inflation

Comments 12

kayjayuu March 23 2009, 23:12:36 UTC

Hm. Any ideas why the main link to the main page doesn't work? Or maybe it's my browser only.

cieldumort March 23 2009, 23:30:36 UTC

Link works fine for me.

kayjayuu March 23 2009, 23:52:01 UTC

Dunno, I'm using Chrome, and it doesn't show as a hyperlink for me. But my coding is right. :/

The month by month link is fine. I rebooted, too.

cieldumort March 23 2009, 23:55:06 UTC

http://www.miseryindex.us/

Is this the page you are asking about? (I had assumed that it was, and yes, it is still opening for me).

Perhaps just open it from the link above.

Do you have any kind of ad block or spyware running? Perhaps there are some issues with either of those?

cieldumort March 23 2009, 23:27:19 UTC

This "misery index" was created during and for a truly different economic time.

It is obsolete as f*ck, now.

A far more timely index has recently been put together by CNN. Most of its components are near or at record bottoms.

Also, the pain now isn't from inflation, it's from debt and deflation.

The right kept bringing up the inflation canard all this past year, claiming, with mortal futility, that somehow "W's recession" was just a figment of our imagination.. how it doesn't come close to "Carter's recession" (which is an absolute rewriting of history, to begin with)..

It was almost comical in the face of $4 gallon gas (given that there was still some nasty inflation out there). Now, while we're fighting off the first debt-deflation spiral this country has seen since the 1930s, it's absurd.

kayjayuu March 23 2009, 23:53:59 UTC

I just posted it for the sake of information and comparison. I would assume that if it were above 21% there would be howling that it was the worst Misery Index evah. Of course, that would be true and things would be screwed badly, considering the two pieces of the puzzle. But I'm sure it wouldn't be considered obsolete at that point.

cieldumort March 23 2009, 23:57:59 UTC

Ahh. Gotcha.

The headline you ran for it just made it seem as if you thought, and were advancing the notion that, the whole "really bad recession/depression" stuff is just bunk (based on this supposedly golden index). I had been reading and hearing so much of that coming out of some quarters (well, the right) last year that I guess I am just reacting to anything that reminds me of those claims.

kayjayuu March 24 2009, 00:18:07 UTC

My attempt at a play on words. Misery, company, etc. According to the Misery Index, things aren't so bad! *cough* But we are, um, lucky? there isn't more inflation (yet), but unlucky that it's turned to deflation instead.

I'm convinced there isn't any index in the world that can capture how things really are, good or bad.

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