Monday, December 1, 2008

It's official the US is in a recession


The NBER recession dating committee met on Friday and have agreed that the economy peaked in December 2007, so we have been in a recession for just under a year. Now you could have asked a lot a people the same question and they would have answered this question a lot earlier.

Since there is not definitive means of determining the when we are in a recession we have to using a dating committee which looks at a number of criteria. The following story provides the official comments from the NBER with Q and A, http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2008-12-01-recession-nber-statement_N.htm

Should we feel and better or worse now that we have the recession dated? The one thing that is clear is that this recession is already longer than the average of past post-WWII recessions and will be of a magnitude at least as deep as the 1980-81 recession. At least we have a point of measure nd baiss for what needs to be done in terms of fiscal stimulus.

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