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
I find this a sad commentary. I think the recession started before then. We may never know.
Suzy
rated!!
I find this a sad commentary. I think the recession started before then. We may never know.
Suzy
rated!!
National Bureau of Economic Retards
Never Been Employed, Really
No Brainer ~ Economic Recession
... gotta run ... but I think I can come up with more ...
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!
Excellent!!!
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.
That is, if it isn't labeled the D word.
rated for it's "duh" factor
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.
From the sublime to the ridiculous.
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.
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."
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!!!!!"
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
What was so great about the Depression anyway?
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
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.
Breaking News! Dewey lost!