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John Ashcroft
01-22-2004, 04:19 PM
The last recession may have started in the last months of the Clinton administration rather than at the beginning of the Bush administration.

May have???

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."

Yeah, but liberals don't listen to reason...

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.

So is it safe to rename it the "Clinton/Algore recession"?

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."

Link: here (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38826-2004Jan22?language=printer)

knuckleboner
01-22-2004, 05:03 PM
Originally posted by John Ashcroft
"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."

Yeah, but liberals don't listen to reason...



i'd say the average person doesn't listen to reason. conservatives had no problem touting bush when we had the highest GDP quarterly growth in 20 years...

the fact is that while the president can influence the economy somewhat, it's the congress that has more control over it.

but good or bad, the president will always be seen as the quarterback.


(however, let me make the "typical-liberal" response and say that the economy didn't sour until after the november 2000 election...;))

Catfish
01-22-2004, 05:34 PM
Everything was Clinton's fault.

FORD
01-22-2004, 05:58 PM
Originally posted by knuckleboner


but good or bad, the president will always be seen as the quarterback.



"Quarterback?, no sir, you'll be more like the coach." - Condoleeza Rice to Junior, January 2001

And as for a right wing admission of when the recession started, click here (http://www.google.com/search?as_q=March+2001+recession&num=10&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=lang_en&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=www.foxnews.com&safe=images)

Dr. Love
01-22-2004, 08:33 PM
Wasn't that the time when everyone was complaining that Bush was "talking down" the economy?

John Ashcroft
01-23-2004, 08:10 AM
Yeah, but notice no one has accused the Dems of "talking down" the economy, and they've been at it for 3 years.

Some Conservative Press, huh?

ZahZoo
01-23-2004, 03:57 PM
This is all bullshit!!! Neither Clinton nor Bush nor Congress have a rat's ass to do with the economic swing that occurred from the mid-90's through present.

Information technology is the leading culprit. Manufacturing and agricultural output and productivity have steadily increased during this whole period. The technology that drives this has been driving down labor and driving up productivity at never before seen rates. In simple terms we can produce more than ever before and it takes significantly less people to do so.

The government didn't do this... business innovation did. Actually the government lags in technology deployment/adoption by about 5 years.

The build up of the dot.com bubble and the preparation for for the year 2000 drove business and investments to record levels in 1998 & 1999. Capital investments in computors and software have never been higher those 2 years.

Towards the end of 1999 capital investments dropped significantly as the huge refresh of technology for 2000 completed. Then reality hit the business world... while a fantastic idea all this internet stuff investors woke up and started looking at where all the money had been going and wanting to see a return on thier investments. When the return wasn't there... investment capital dried up fast and what was left in the dot.com coffers spent even faster.

Then the bottom fell out and the stock market made a long aver-due correction and brought stock values closer to earth and reality.

We were on the verge of the market picking up when 9/11 hit... then the world tucked tail and went on hold to see what played out.

Job growth will be shifting in the next 10 years as well. The off-shore stuff is just a very small percentage. IT jobs will probably double and services will reign king. Look to see huge shifts in the medical and funeral business as the baby-boomers take the lead in demographics.

And quit blaming the government on the economy... outside of wasting $trillions of our hard earned cash... which the people need to stand up and take back... watch technology and global markets drive the economy.