Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Ripsnort on January 22, 2004, 04:36:57 PM
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Thank goodness Bush pulled us out of it! WTG George!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38826-2004Jan22?language=printer
(From the ever-liberal Washington Post)
Economists Say Recession Started in 2000
By Nell Henderson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 22, 2004; 1:34 PM
The last recession may have started in the last months of the Clinton administration rather than at the beginning of the Bush administration.
The panel of economists that serves as the official timekeeper for the nation's recessions is considering moving the starting date for the most recent economic decline back to November or December of 2000, a member of the group said today, confirming a report that appeared in The Wall Street Journal.
"We have discussed it already and there seems to be some inclination to move the date" to some time in the last three months of 2000, said Victor Zarnowitz. He is a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research's business cycle dating committee, which determines the widely accepted start and end dates to U.S. recessions.
The seven-member panel had earlier decided that the recession began in March 2001 and ended in November that year. President Bush took office in January 2001.
NBER is a private, nonprofit economic research group. Zarnowitz, an economist with the Conference Board, another private research group, said the dating decision will be nonpolitical, based solely on recently revised government economic data.
"Presidents don't have so much to do, in my opinion, with when recessions start," Zarnowitz said. "Clearly the boom happened under Clinton, and the boom generates the bust. And no administration has the power to change that."
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," but he did not offer a different date. "We are still waiting for additional monthly data before making a final judgment," said Feldstein, a Harvard University economist. "Until we have the additional data, we cannot make a decision."
The Wall Street Journal story quoted Robert Hall, a Stanford University economics professor who chairs the dating committee, saying that "a reasonable look at the numbers" could lead one to decide that the recession started some time between November 2000 and February 2001.
Zarnowitz said he will look further at the data, but thinks now that "the recession started maybe November or December 2000 and lasted to November of 2001." If so, that would be an average duration for a post World War II recession, changing the perception up until now that the last recession was shorter than average.
Zarnowitz said he does not know when the committee will meet to make an official decision.
The panel picked March 2001 as the beginning of the recession primarily because that was when U.S. payroll employment began to drop seriously. Since then, the economy has lost some 2.4 million jobs.
But the economists look at other indicators as well. The group defines a recession as "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP [inflation-adjusted gross domestic product], real income, employment, industrial production and wholesale-retail sales. A recession begins just after the economy reaches a peak of activity and ends as the economy reaches its trough."
In previous recessions, the payroll jobs number was a pretty good proxy for economic growth, rising and falling as the economy expanded and contracted, although often with a bit of a lag. But the two have diverged dramatically in recent years, with payrolls continuing to shrink more than two years after the end of the recession. Meanwhile the nation's output of goods and services, or GDP, declined in the first three quarters of 2001, but started growing again in the fourth quarter of that year and has continued to rise since then.
This has been possible because businesses adopted new technology and management methods to boost production while shedding workers. The growth in productivity -- the amount of goods and services produced for each hour worked -- rose through the contraction and recovery since.
Zarnowitz said the NBER dating committee closely follows an index that combines measures of industrial production, total demand, personal income minus government transfer payments, and the number of nonfarm payroll jobs--giving more weight to the jobs component. According to recently revised data, the index "started falling in December or November 2000," he said.
"Three of the four components would definitely point to an earlier date" for the beginning of the recession, he said. "Only one lagged."
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This should be good.
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Originally posted by Saurdaukar
This should be good.
{unfolds another collapsible chair for Saur, hands him a cold brew and a weinie stick}
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Wheres Juve and his grill?
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Originally posted by Ripsnort
Thank goodness Bush pulled us out of it! WTG George!
It's over? Someone please tell my mutual funds, they seem to be a bit hard of hearing after the beating they've taken.
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Originally posted by Tarmac
It's over? Someone please tell my mutual funds, they seem to be a bit hard of hearing after the beating they've taken.
Mine has increased 45% in the last 12 months...better find another broker, pal ;)
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Where exactly are all those lost jobs again?
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Originally posted by midnight Target
Where exactly are all those lost jobs again?
Not in this country, thank the Unions for that.
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Originally posted by Ripsnort
Mine has increased 45% in the last 12 months...better find another broker, pal ;)
Ouch, you serious?
I'll pass that advice on to my parents. He's the family's financial advisor - I just kinda said "Here, I have all this money from my job earning 1% in the bank, make it do better."
I'm only about 25% down now, which is better than it was a year ago I guess.
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LOL not in this country, thank horrid corps expoiting cheap labor in India...
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Rip, why bother, the people you are trolling for have already redefined the term "recession" to fit their political goals (deth to boosh, deth to amreeka).
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I don't think there ever was a recession incoming.
There was the dotcom crash etc., then the economy has been bit wavering around due to people being cautious, preceeded by the sept 11th attack, which both had a bit exagerated effect on the economy.
Recently the markets have again gained the confidence and are getting back to healthy levels.
I don't think Bush had too much to do there.. could've told this before his election or after the sept 11th.
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And Fishu ruins a perfectly good troll thread by posting rational statements. :)
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Lol! Good ole' Washington Post.
Proven Fact that the economy went to hell in a handbasket in the last **YEAR** of Clinton's term.
Also note the use of words which are not definitive at all. That way they can't be wrong no matter which way you go.
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Didnt you post this last year as well?
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"based solely on recently revised government economic data"
whos goverment was that again?
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Bush was ridiculed for warning that the US was in a recession......during his presidential campaign. He was belittled and people said he was "talking down" the economy.
Turns out he was right all along.