January 25, 2004

NOT BUSH, NOT CLINTON, BUT GREENSPAN:

Panel: Bush may have inherited recession (Associated Press, January 22, 2004)

It turns out that President Bush may have inherited a recession after all.

The president often makes that claim when talking about the economy, prompting Democrats to charge he is fudging history since the recession began in March 2001, two months after he took office, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

But NBER officials said Thursday they are debating whether they made a mistake and the downturn actually began as early as November 2000, when Bill Clinton was still in the White House.

The seven-member cycle dating committee, composed of academic economists who specialize in studying business cycles, may well end up leaving the starting date of the recession alone, officials said.


When they finally sift through the numbers--which will be decades from now--it won't have been a recession, just a period of flat or slow growth, however, it did begin in 2000, as a result of Alan Greenspan's badly miscalculated Fed rate hikes.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 25, 2004 04:17 PM
Comments

Recessions -- as defined by these panels -- end up being lagging reflectors of economic activity. Stockmarkets downturns like what we saw from April 2000 to March 2001 (note: a very sharp downturn, not the kinds that are accused of prediting six out of the last two recessions) and a host of other leading data (economic profits, as opposed to phony reported profits, a telling one) suggested the economy had had it with speculation and unprofitable investments. Certainly it started well under Clinton-Rubin.

Posted by: MG at January 25, 2004 05:14 PM

I'm not close to being an economist, so pardon, but am I incorrect in observing it always seems we always go into the recessions earlier than initially thought and come out of it in just the same manner, earlier than initially thought?

Posted by: neil at January 25, 2004 09:32 PM

As a result of badly miscalculated rate hikes, and nothing else?

I seem to remember a .com bubble that went with quite the bang.

Posted by: Jeff Guinn at January 26, 2004 12:07 PM

neil:

Hard to know since we haven't had one since 1981.

Posted by: oj at January 26, 2004 12:30 PM
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