On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 12:05 PM, Doug Henwood <[email protected]> wrote: > Charles Brown wrote: >> If the US has been in a recession since January 2008, does that mean that >> GDP dropped in the last quarter or last two quarters of 2007 ? And has >> dropped in all quarters since ? And this fact was missed by the Bureau of >> Labor Statistics until this past fall ?
Doug: > There is no requirement that GDP fall in any number of quarters for a > recession to be declared. The "two consecutive quarters of decline" metric > is popular, but it has no official status. The two quarters definition is journalists' summary of the (unofficial) NBER definition. The summary almost always works. It's notable that it didn't with the 2008 recession: as I understand it, the NBER people broke away from the usual emphasis on production, because the job market was clearly in bad shape. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
