Posted on 03/06/2013 5:28:53 AM PST by blam
ACHUTHAN: Look At These Charts And Tell Me We're Not In Recession
Sam Ro
March 5, 2013, 10:50 PM
Since 2011, Lakshman Achuthan of the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI) has been taking a lot of heat for his controversial call that the U.S. economy would fall into a recession.
In an apperence with Bloomberg's Tom Keene last November, Achuthan clarified that based on the four official recession indicators considered by the NBER — the folks who date recession — the U.S. fell into recession in July 2012. He also said we would know that the U.S. fell into recession by the end of 2012.
Since then, the ECRI head had been off the radar.
Today, Achuthan emailed to Business Insider a brand new presentation titled "The U.S. Business Cycle in the Context of the Yo-Yo Years."
In 17 pages, Achuthan makes his best effort to defend his recession call.
Economic Cycle Research Institute
He begins by looking at what gross domestic product (GDP) and gross domestic income (GDI) are telling us. First, GDP:
As it happened, in January 2013 there was a negative GDP print, consistent with our belief that the recession had begun around mid-2012.
Here we have a chart of year-over-year nominal GDP growth which, after last week’s revision of real GDP growth from -0.1% to 0.1%, is still down to 3.5%.
This chart begins in the early 1980s. Based on the full 65 years of historical data, nominal GDP growth below 3.7%, which is marked off by the horizontal line, has always occurred in a recessionary context – without exception.
This chart is consistent with a mild recession. Yet, we have all heard lots of commentary that we’re in a “2% economy” – not that great,
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Now, now. Uncle hussein said we’ve turned the corner so of course I believe him rather than somebody who does it for a living. How could I not. He is “The First halfrican-Amercan cinc”. Or is that the second since he somehow got re-immaculated. (Maybe he doesn’t want to be contaminated with any phrase concerning “the 2nd”.)
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