When Will We Know For Sure Recession is Over? 2011
There has been a lot of discussion lately about green shoots, mustard seeds and an end to the recession sometime this year. How long would it take for the NBER to make the official announcement that the current recession is over? Let's look at the last two recessions.
The last recession ended in November 2001, but the official announcement by the NBER didn't come until July 17, 2003, almost 20 months after the recession was over.
The 1990-1991 recession ended in March of 1991, but the NBER official announcement that the recession ended was not released until December 22, 1992, almost 21 months later.
Let's be optimistic and assume that the recession ends in the middle of 2009, and let's pick June 2009 as a possibility. In that case, given the past record of the NBER, we wouldn't know officially that the recession ended until February or March of 2011.
Bottom Line: Under the most optimistic circumstances, we won't know until 2011 that the recession has officially ended.
7 Comments:
We'll know before the mid-terms this time around.
What happened to the definition of two consecutive quarters of negative growth?
Great point. But will the public feel like the recession is over prior to 2011?
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We haven't even gotten to the traditional argument over what the "end of recession" actually means. Some people will say a recession ends when the economy turns up, others will say it doesn't end until we get back to pre-recession levels. Of course, you can look at it from a practical point of view and just declare the recession over when the argument about it being over starts.
Miller makes some good points but he overlooked that the liberals will want to not have the recession over by the mid-term elections so they can keep bashing Bush for the problems that exist.
I predict it will conveniently be announced at the most opportune moment for Obama's re-election campaign.
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