Originally posted by zeeblebot where's my rec? where's my rec?
Really, I share your antipathy with these so-called economists who think that reading the FT or talking to their friends is enough to make forecasts. I share telerion's reluctance in even calling them economists without any qualifier.
But that comment was a hell of a misfire (as Melanerpes pointed out).
I won't bore you with all the grubby details, which you can find at http://www.nber.org. One thing that will leap out at you is the contrast between economic reality and what many people believe. For example, conventional wisdom is that the devastation wrought on Sept. 11, 2001, sent the U.S. economy into a tailspin. The reality, according to NBER, is that the economy was already in a recession, which had started in March 2001 (or, some committee members now think, even earlier) and ended in November -- two months after Sept. 11. The committee, however, didn't announce this until July 17, 2003. By then, the popular assumptions about the effects of Sept. 11 were set in stone.
I'm not naive, and I know that the question of whether there's a recession has enormous political implications for the 2008 elections, which is a major reason so many of my colleagues in the media are obsessed with it. But we're talking about investments here, not politics.
Originally posted by zeeblebot so how about the party-out-of-power and their media syncophants declaring over and over how bad the economy is? .... in an economy that's 70 pct consumer-driven ...
like shouting fire in a theater ....
the Clinton Miracle was tanking before bush was elected. the peak was spring 2000 and the election was nov 2000. but what we got out of that was mon ...[text shortened]... runup to the election.
the economy sure got worse after two years of campaigning against it.
I remember back in the late 1990's. It was known as the "tech bubble". The blame was put on the stock and investment bubbles that arose out of the craziness that ensued after all sorts of new companies were arising based around the new internet technology (and other electronics) that had emerged. Then, just when things were beginning to think about recovering, 9-11 happened, and the fallout from that probably added another 6 months or so to the recession.
I don't recall any kind of "conventional wisdom" that blamed the whole recession on 9-11 (although there was agreement that 9-11 definitely didn't help speed up the recovery).
I don't recall there being that much blame put on Bush.
One thing that the media did seem to miss was the thing that seemed to have triggered the whole tech crash. It was a ruling that was made involving the antitrust suit being filed against Microsoft regarding Windows. While it wasn't the real "cause" of the crash, it definitely seemed to be the pin that burst the balloon.
The story of today’s deficits starts in January 2001, as President Bill Clinton was leaving office. The Congressional Budget Office estimated then that the government would run an average annual surplus of more than $800 billion a year from 2009 to 2012. Today, the government is expected to run a $1.2 trillion annual deficit in those years.
The NBER's Business Cycle Dating Committee (BCDC) uses monthly, rather than quarterly, indicators to determine peaks and troughs in business activity[1], as can be seen by noting that starting and ending dates are given by month and year, not quarters. However, controversy over the precise dates of the recession led to the characterization of the recession as the "Clinton Recession" by Republicans, if it could be traced to the final term of President Bill Clinton. A move in the recession date in a 2004 report by the Council of Economic Advisors to several months before the one given by the NBER was seen as politically motivated.[2] BCDC members suggested they would be open to revisiting the dates of the recession as newer and more definitive data became available.[3] In early 2004, NBER President Martin Feldstein said:
"It is clear that the revised data have made our original March date for the start of the recession much too late. We are still waiting for additional monthly data before making a final judgment. Until we have the additional data, we cannot make a decision."[3]
Nonetheless, as of early 2008, no further revision to the dates has been made.
Originally posted by zeeblebot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_2000s_recession#United_States
...
The NBER's Business Cycle Dating Committee (BCDC) uses monthly, rather than quarterly, indicators to determine peaks and troughs in business activity[1], as can be seen by noting that starting and ending dates are given by month and year, not quarters. However, controversy over the 3]
Nonetheless, as of early 2008, no further revision to the dates has been made.
...
I've always hated it when people try to blame a given recession on this president or that president. Most recessions occur for reasons that don't have much to do with a given president's policies - and are often more related to what happened under the previous president's watch (if not earlier).
if anyone is to blame for recessions (or inflations), it's usually the Fed chair, whose policies can directly cause a downturn (if he tightens monetary policy too rapidly), or can allow bubbles to expand too greatly (if he fails to tighten monetary policy rapidly enough) or can hinder a recovery (by not loosening policy rapidly enough).
Which is why I have the utmost respect for whomever holds this position. He's much like an umpire - he'll never get credit for making the right calls, but he'll get loads of criticism for the occasional bad call - and those bad calls can have a major impact on the game.
Originally posted by zeeblebot i'm not blaming them on presidents. i'm blaming them on presidential and congressional CANDIDATES, and their minions. without respect to party.
And I'm generally not blaming any of the presidents, candidates, congressmen, or any of their respective minions. The Fed plays a major role in keeping the business cycle from getting too far out of hand - and for the most part, it does a good job. Sometimes the wrong call will be made. But as with baseball umpires, it truly amazes me that they get so many of the calls right.
Beyond that, some of the blame can be put on regulatory policies. And we can learn from recessions about what policies (or lack of policies) might have contributed to the downturn. But even here, I prefer not to say that this candidate or that Congress was at fault so we can all throw tomatoes at them. I don't think anyone in the Clinton administration wanted the "tech-crash" that happened in 2001 to occur. I don't think anyone in the Bush administration wanted the current recession to occur. I'm sure if they had a do-over, they would've acted differently. I'm sure Greenspan would've acted differently as well.
22 Oct '09 14:21
obama vs. the economy
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