Posted on 04/12/2010 7:56:58 AM PDT by mlocher
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It is too soon to determine when the U.S. recession ended, the arbiter of U.S. business cycles said on Monday.
"Although most indicators have turned up, the committee decided that the determination of the trough date on the basis of current data would be premature," the National Bureau of Economic Research said in a statement.
"Many indicators are quite preliminary at this time and will be revised in coming months," the group said.
The NBER said its business cycle dating committee, a group of economists that pinpoints when recessions begin and end, had met on April 8 to consider whether it had enough data to call the end of the latest slump.
The group looks at a range of indicators, not just gross domestic product, to determine when business cycles begin and end, and is well-known for waiting many months before making its determinations.
However, some committee members have said recently that they believed the recession ended last summer or fall, judging by economic growth, employment and other factors.
Many private economists think the downturn probably ended in June or perhaps a couple of months later. The economy resumed growth in the third quarter of 2009, although employment continued to contract for several more months. Payrolls have recorded only two monthly gains since the recession started -- in November 2009 and March 2010.
The NBER said its committee reaffirmed that the recession began in December 2007.
Uh, cause it hasn’t?
Who says the recession ended? How about Jobs and unemployment figures?
Such Econo-propaganda.
I feel like I’m living in mother Russia.
When you're a hundred fathoms deep, what's the difference is you're halfway down or sitting on the bottom? The debt holding the wreckage down is just too massive.
Shut up and believe what you are told, comrade.
With a larger set of 5 year ARMs resetting in the next 18 months than there were 3 year ARM last year and the commercial repo’s heading for the moon, I’m not sure a bottom has been reached. The DOW is up but with little volumn; sounds like a suck’s market / dead cat bounce to me.
A repeat of 1932 is about to happen...
everyone just needs to go back and review what happened during the great depression years.
we are nowhere near the bottom.
it is all smoke and mirrors...
Exactly. Even the false claims that the recession is over are a repeat from the Great Depression.
Maybe they can’t say when the recession ended because it hasn’t happened yet.
Our government is living in a world of make-believe.
Commercial real estate is in very bad shape but hasn’t crashed YET! It HAS TO! When it does we will go back into another deep recession!
Da, Tvarich... Da.
Correct. The key difference is that the Fed increased the money supply this time instead of shrinking it, as done in 1929. The intrinsic value of products is dropping, although with more cash in the system, the price appears to be "near normal."
“some committee members have said recently that they believed the recession ended last summer or fall, judging by economic growth, employment and other factors.”
Ideological Partizans dead set on destroying the institutions of their professions in order to further the agitation and propaganda of their ideological socio-political sect.
Can anyone on FR name and shame these sad sacks?
The govt economists keep on crowing about the recovery.
The stock market is up over 11K this morning due to the strength of next target of the obama’s. The energy industry.
I feel like I’m living in mother Russia.
Shut up and believe what you are told, comrade.
And, Just wait for the next 5 year plan!
You produce your way out of a recession/depression...not spend.
That is why it took all the production during WWII to get ourselves out of the last mess...and unfortunately history is pretty clear on this - this ends in armed conflict whether it will be here domestically or global...either way it is coming and all because of this reckless international spending.
Two quotes I think will live down in infamy.
1) George Bush - I had to abandon the free market principles to save the free market
2) Obama, et al - FDR wasn't more successful because he just didn't spend enough.
Aye yi yi...how do these people ever graduate from Yale or Harvard?
I am a little more generous to these folks. They are sorting through data and applying principles that were true in a previous, more capitalist time. That is, their job is to analyze what just happened, and they are not a predictive body. However, the current fiscal policies are changing very rapidly and this body has not kept up with determining how these policies are impacting their stated results.
I am much more skeptical of main stream economists that are predicting what will happen in the next few months and years. Most are Keynesian Klutzes.
Tough to get in, but once in, always in.
"Political activist Eugene S. Daniell, Jr., who later served as a nin term state representative in New Hampshire, set off two tear-gas bombs near the ventilation system of the New York Stock Exchange in August 1933 to protest the imbalance of wealth between those on Wall Street and the rest of he country during the Depression. Daniell served thirty days in jail for the disruption."
This may be what it is coming to.
I think we’ve reached the level of so much government intervention in the marketplace that you can no longer make predictions of what is going to happen based upon previous business cycles. All this money supply should be causing rampant inflation, but the economy is in such lousy shape and everyone so pulled back that inflation hasn’t kicked off yet. Government borrowing is so huge and out of control that interest rates should be taking off, but not yet for some reason. Just seems like we’re at a balance point that has to give way once government’s big fat hand can’t maintain it anymore.
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