Déjà Vu, Much?

[cieldumort]

Let's see how well I paraphrase all these talking heads of the past few years --

Late 2007:
Recession, if there is one, will be short & shallow.
It will end by Spring! A one quarter "recession," at worst.

Spring 2008:
The economy will rebound strongly in the second half.
We haven't even had one quarter of negative growth. Stocks are cheap!

Comments

[capthek]

As always, it depends on how you define it. You want to include unemployment numbers in your definition of a recession, if memory serves. In that case we have another year at the very least.

But if it's negative growth, I stick to my "end of summer/early fall" prediction. And that growth may very well be below that which would positively affect unemployment, so our economic pain will continue even if growth goes positive again.

[cieldumort]

Not necessarily. Just to clarify:
I *DO NOT* include unemployment numbers in my definition of recession... by themselves.

I thought you were calling for it to be over by summer, no?

Looks like we both get to massage our defs ;)

But to be plain, I do think that unemployment can and often does rise outside of a recession. It's when it rises in conjunction with other certain things falling/deteriorating a significant amount that I believe the NBER should reconsider how they define the end of a recession.

Example: 2001. As you know, IMHO, there is room to argue that the recession, albeit "shallow," dragged on well past the NBER cut off of November '01.

But why are you debating me? You should be debating the Conference Board, eh? It's their forecast :)

[capthek]

Never by summer, you can check past posts, never by summer. I never massaged anything, I have been saying the end of summer/ early fall to all of my friends, students, and here and saying the exact same things a thousand times makes me rather sure I never said by summer. At best I might have said our downward gradient would become less steep by summer.

I am debating you because I didn't see any other source for all of the talking head quotes. I just want to be clear I am not a mindless cheerleader for the economy like some business network airhead. I just happen to think all of the money being poured into our economy will have an effect in time.

[cieldumort]

Well, you didn't participate in the last couple of polls where very strait-forward responses were put forth as options, so I really haven't heard where you stand for a while.. but I do recall you mentioning you think that the recovery would begin sometime in the third quarter (which suggests that you believe the recession will end sometime between July and September; and yes, those are summer months)...

My heckling isn't all that serious, you know. Like I've said, we generally agree more than we generally disagree.

As for sourcing talking heads, tho.. hey, as I stated, I only aimed to paraphrase them, and I think I did a pretty good job lol

[cieldumort]

ikr? lol