Monday, June 25, 2012

We're In A Recession? You're kidding!


DECEMBER 2, 2008 10:17AM

We're In A Recession? You're Kidding!

RATE: 19
This has got to be the stupidest piece of commentary I have ever heard on the news since Sarah Palin blew into town:  The National Bureau of Economic Research has determined that the United States is officially in a recession. Not only is “The R Word” official, but apparently we’ve been in a recession since December 2007.  Is anyone here surprised by this news?  If so, I suggest that you step away from the drugs and booze because clearly you’ve been under the influence of something pretty strong to have missed the economic turmoil of the past few years.
I have a bit of advice for those good, albeit out-of-touch, folks at The National Bureau of Economic Research.  The next time you have a question about the status of our economy, save your research dollars.  Instead, ask someone – anyone – who actually works for a living what it’s like out there.  Better yet: ask someone who’s lost their job, hasn’t been able to find another, and their unemployment has run out.  They’ll be happy to tell you how things are with nauseating accuracy and detail.   

No lengthy research projects required.

Comments

The National Bureau of Economic Research - It is unbelievable, isn't it? This is a good chuckle. :)
Isn't it sad that this came out after the election? Why did the 'lovelys' out there say over and over that we weren't? Did we have another revised downward statistical problem?
I find this a sad commentary. I think the recession started before then. We may never know.
Suzy
rated!!
Isn't it sad that this came out after the election? Why did the 'lovelys' out there say over and over that we weren't? Did we have another revised downward statistical problem?
I find this a sad commentary. I think the recession started before then. We may never know.
Suzy
rated!!
ok ... let's see NBER:
National Bureau of Economic Retards
Never Been Employed, Really
No Brainer ~ Economic Recession
... gotta run ... but I think I can come up with more ...
I love it how we have to make things official. After all it's still controversial to call the civil unrest in Darfur 'genocide'. Sheesh! Rated.
Screamin' mama - Unbelievable indeed. I heard it on the news and just burst out laughing. These people are experts?

Suzy - I know - they kept telling us everything was fine. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together knew otherwise, but still, they kept lying about it.

1IM - I love that! Here's another one: Numbskills Blind to Economic Ruin.

Stellaa - Oh, yes - the stock market reacting in shock was the best! Helloooo?! This is news?

JLDavis - Hell yeah! You'd think that the gas prices (which exceeded $4.00 per gallon here) would have been a clue that something was amiss.

Mungular - You're right. Perhaps next week they'll solve that little matter of classifying the brutal activity in Darfur. Arrgh!
oh Lisa !!! Your's is totally better than mine!!!
Excellent!!!
1IM - Ack! Oh for editable comments...It should be NUMBSKULLS.
Yeah, News Flash! Try to keep up boysMy personal recession started long ago.
I'm reminded of Palin and McCain, with their insufferable bashing of grizzly bear genomics and fruit fly research. All research looks pointless until you understand why it was undertaken, and most laymen aren't competent to judge the viability or necessity of most research.

The thing you appear to be a little hazy on - no offense - is the fact that a recession isn't just "the economy sucking." Economically, it's defined as "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP growth, real personal income, employment (non-farm payrolls), industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales."

Given all the other sources of variability that can tweak those factors up and down on short time scales, it takes a while - even up to a year - to establish that there's a real trend downward in those factors. And if those factors aren't trending downward in a statistically significant fashion, it's not really a recession. It's maybe a downturn or a slowdown. For it to actually be a recession, the data on those factors listed above needs to be collected over a sufficient period of time to resolve a trend, prepared, analyzed using various statistical tests, and

So no, some recently-fired schlub or somebody whose stocks just nosedived aren't competent to tell you whether real GDP growth has declined. Because they don't know, and because they don't have a world-class statistical package between their ears, and because the mere fact that things are tough is not an indication that the define economic phenomenon called a recession is actually happening.

Populist anti-intellectualism always flares up when people are despondent, but don't be so quick to judge.
The good news is that most recessions would have been over by now. So maybe, just maybe, this will burn out a bit sooner than a couple of years with our new leadership.

That is, if it isn't labeled the D word.
During the election, a man said to me, "if I vote for Obama, we'll surely go into a recession." I laughed (probably as you would have Lisa) and said "pal, if you are under the delusion that we are NOT already in a recession, you've got bigger problems than who to vote for."

rated for it's "duh" factor
I thought numb skills was dead on ... thier skills truly are numb!!!
"I thought numb skills was dead on ... thier skills truly are numb!!! "

Oh, so you know more about stats, data collection, and analysis? We'd all love to see your published research that established that we were in a recession - been out for a couple months, right? No?

This entire thread is a monument to the hazard of knowing just enough to think you know everything, and just to little to know how much more you've got to learn.
I was dumbfounded, to say the least! Can you imagine? A RECESSION! I would never have known if they hadn't pointed it out to me.
Charlie, haven't some economists been saying for a while now (like since the early part of this year) that we are in a recession? It's my understanding that it only takes a contraction lasting 2 quarters to be a "recession." The chuckles are over the fact that the NBER seems late to the party. I don't think anyone here is claiming to be an economist.
Yes they have buckeyedoc. Charlie must have missed those publications. Many FAR more intelligent people than Hank Paulson have admitted we're IN a recession prior to this landmark, historic revelation from the ONE official source that we're in a recession. I think my 8-year old knew we were in a recession. But Charlie was waiting on an "official" release of the obvious.

From the sublime to the ridiculous.
I woke up to this "news" today and laughed myself silly. Really!? Recession!? Surely you jest. It really makes you wonder what planet these people are living on. How long has it been now that they've been telling us, "this is 'not' a recession"? Well, Bush admitted to a "slow-down". Good grief.
"It's my understanding that it only takes a contraction lasting 2 quarters to be a "recession." The chuckles are over the fact that the NBER seems late to the party."

They're not - they're just operating on a cautious, formulaic, and in my opinion far more comprehensive and methodologically sound definition of recession. They're not late to the party - everybody else was standing around outside going "woo" while the host was still in the shower.
"But Charlie was waiting on an "official" release of the obvious."

Looks like I'm ruffling plenty of feathers. Of course, plenty of folks were saying we were in a recession. They were correct, but incautious; what they should have been saying is "a recession is extremely probable" or "all signs demonstrate that we're either starting or already in a recession". Qualifiers don't impress peple as much as they should, though.

What NBER is doing is describing when it started and how it's behaved, and demonstrating the statistics that establish this as a defined recession. They're not saying "o hai guise look a recession." They're quantifying and describing it in more detail and with more predictive power than Hank Paulson simply saying "yeah, looks like a recession."

It's like the difference between saying, "yeah, it's getting hot, and glaciers are receding" and "global temperatures have increased by an average of 1.1 degrees since the early 80's."
I'm not an economist, but my understanding is that a lot of economists are deeply into building models that describe, predict, and explain patterns we see in various economic indicators over time. When you do something like this, it's really helpful to have data that are labeled as precisely and consistently as possible over time. For example, you might want to distinguish between different models that make quite similar predictions but are based on very different assumptions, so it might make a difference if one says, "The recession started at this time," and the other says, "No, it started two months later." Thus the NBER is careful and does things after the fact, for the sake of providing data that others can use in the future.
"Thus the NBER is careful and does things after the fact, for the sake of providing data that others can use in the future."

Thanks for posting this; it's a good point. The NBER's primary customers are not the general public - their research and reports are targeted at policymakers both present and future, who depend on a carefully defined, statistically rigorous analysis that can be used for retroactive analysis and for proactive prediction. Knowing not only that a recession is happening, but how this particular recession is behaving and how it may be expected to act in the future is more important than being first to cross the finish line screaming "oh no a recession!!!!!"
Well, now that it's official, I feel so much better!
After reading a profile of the economic crisis in the current New Yorker, I'm even more convinced that those guys have their heads too far up the numbers to know what is obvious to the rest of us. They didn't see the Internet bubble when the rest of us did (really? millions of dollars for diarrheasolutions.com? how could there not be a bubble). And the housing bubble was so much more obvious to everyone. Yet those guys did not see it coming. They denied it to everyone who told them about it. Really. Stuff has got to change.
"Yet those guys did not see it coming."

Who are "those guys"? I know plenty of economists - I'm dating one and get dragged to all the holiday parties - and I was hearing about the popping of the credit and housing bubbles years ago. A few of them even tried to make noise about it, but everybody was too busy borrowing money, lending money, and making money to pay much attention. I think that "those guys" are far less monolithic than you think.

Now, if you want to bemoan the fact that there's far too few authoritative, trustworthy public intellectuals who aren't partisan hacks or ideologues, and as such a major disconnect has formed between authoritative commentators and the public they could and should be communicating with, I'll join you on that one. But to say this caught everybody by surprise is, in my experience, dead wrong; Nouriel Roubini, George Soros, and a few other analysts were trying as hard as they could to share what they knew. They just got ignored or shouted down by the contingent of "those guys" whose ideologies or financial interests demanded that they do so.
Wow, I missed a lot of conversation while I was at the Vet's with Madame Cujo...

Charlie - I am not an economist, and I certainly don't pretend to be. However, you cannot deny that the term "recession" has been used quite frequently within the past 6 months by people who ARE true experts. My complaint is that while the "experts" wait to take any action, pending an exact definition of a recession, things slide from bad to worse.

I appreciate that this is an historic event and one that no doubt will be referenced in decades to come. I can also appreciate that all of the data has to be collected and analyzed properly in order to be considered valid. However, in using the word "recession" in its typical meaning of flat wages and runaway inflation, most Americans did not need to wait for the official diagnosis.

I appreciate your input, and I thank you for the education, but I think you are taking my post way too seriously.
"However, in using the word "recession" in its typical meaning of flat wages and runaway inflation, most Americans did not need to wait for the official diagnosis."

That's fine, but what I'm trying to say is that this research isn't really targeted to most Americans, but to economists and policymakers who need to know something more specific than "it's a recession, all right."
I know plenty of economists - I'm dating one and get dragged to all the holiday parties

Oh... my... God...

Just kidding. :-) The economists I know tend to kid around occasionally, in a resigned sort of way, about theirs being the dismal science.
"The economists I know tend to kid around occasionally, in a resigned sort of way, about theirs being the dismal science."

Dunno if the field itself lives up to its sad little nickname, but the parties are sure dismal as hell. I'm used to partying with ecologists, EPA staffers, and field crews, so when I go to a party and the ONLY humor is about how dismal economics is, the only recourse is to get hammered.
Charlie, you are making my parties with veterinary pathologists (think of tumor and parasite conversations) sound like nonstop laughs by comparison with the image of your gathering of economists ;-)
My hairline has been a state of recession for years, but I still have some hair. I just hope the economy doesn't end up like my emotional state.

What was so great about the Depression anyway?
"(think of tumor and parasite conversations) "

K, BDoc, I'll bite:

(What Would a Tumor say to a Parasite???)

...oh, well, uh, here's some jokes, though:

A fellow accidentally ingested some alpha-L-glucose and discovered that he had no ill effects. Apparently he was ambidextrose.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Q: Why are there no asprin in the jungle?
A: Because the parrots-eat-them-all.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Did you hear about the biologist who had twins? She baptized one and kept the other as a control.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

aminoacyl--------------An -NH/sub2 that's a real jerk
apical membrane--------That green bumpy stuff on the outside of a baby dill
asymmetry--------------Where you bury dead people
beta-sheet-------------Linen you only bring out for company
CA/sup{2+} channel-----The all-milk TV station
chemotaxis-------------A cab which provides drug therapy
detergents-------------What women do when telling a guy to take a hike
diglyceride------------what you scream out when trying to kill a glyceride
hippocampus------------where hippos go to university.
microtome--------------An itty bitty book
pachytene--------------Adolescent elephants
plastid----------------Drunk
prokaryote-------------In favor of take-out food
redox------------------Rusty cattle
taxol------------------Liberal plan for increasing revenue
Here's some statistics for you: Between 1997 and 2007, the number of manufacturing jobs (read middle-class wages and health benefits) fell from 17 million to 13 million. Meanwhile, income for the top tenth of one percent was up astronomically -- hmmm? 'Spose there's a connection?
Uh, Charlie, while your busy praising brilliant, thorough, thoughtful economists for their dismal science, how about a word or two thousand in defense of Ayn Rand Acolyte Alan Greenspan? All we are saying is you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows -- unless your Alan Greenspan.
"how about a word or two thousand in defense of Ayn Rand Acolyte Alan Greenspan?"

Why would I? He - and most other classical economists - couldn't tell his ass from his elbow, with the results that we have all seen.

Ohhhh, I get it, you drew some dumb conclusions from my posts. Gotcha. Ok, for the record, I am not a blanket advocate for all economic theories, nor do I think that economics holds all the answers. I think most economics is full of shit, actually, and the only economists I listen to are the ones who have proven than their theories and models can actually explain and predict.

Sorry if that's not quite binary enough for you.

As for knowing which way the wind blows, that's great, but we're sort of beyond that now, and plenty of people are interested not only which way the wind is blowing but how fast and what kind of weather we might face tomorrow, and they need a weatherman for that. If the wind is all you're interested in, go twiddle your thumbs.
They are not even trying to hide their contempt for the American public anymore. How about a one year, retroactive weather report? "Idiocracy" should be required viewing for everyone.

Breaking News! Dewey lost!
Since you're so much wiser than us mere mortals, Charles, and since you know who all the real experts are, pray tell us -- which way is the wind going to blow? Is it fair or foul, Captain? And how about a stock-tip or two while you're at it.
Yes, one of those Duh George stories that cost how much to come to that conclusion. Rated.
Connie, that's hilarious! I am breaking out the beta sheets for my in-laws this month (the pleated ones).
I, too, was so stunned to get this news. And I thought everything had been going so well.

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