Monday, April 12, 2010

St. Louis Fed Graphs: Recession Ended July 2009?

OA asks a good question on a previous CD post: If the NBER has not officially announced the end of the last recession, why are the St. Louis Fed graphs showing the recession ending in July 2009 (see example above)? I was wondering the same thing myself.....

8 Comments:

At 4/12/2010 3:16 PM, Blogger David said...

Good question, indeed

 
At 4/12/2010 3:21 PM, Anonymous Benny The Man said...

St. Louis Fed says MZM, its definition of money supply, is contracting.

How does this fit with the gold nut-superinflationary boom we keep hearing about?

 
At 4/12/2010 4:06 PM, Blogger Max Lybbert said...

When you run a chart on Fred, say http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2 , a few links show up underneath the chart, and one of those (in the Notes section) is "US recession dates." Click on it, and you'll see the explanation ( http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/help-faq/#graph_recessions ): "The NBER has not yet determined the end of the recession that began in December 2007. The date 2009-07-01 has been substituted in graphs as an estimate. This estimate is based on a statistical model for dating business cycle turning points developed by Marcelle Chauvet and Jeremy Piger (A Comparison of the Real-Time Performance of Business Cycle Dating Methods, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 2008, 26, 42-49). For more information, see http://www.uoregon.edu/~jpiger/us_recession_probs.htm "

 
At 4/12/2010 11:02 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sticking with Max, I, too, see NO evidence of recovery....though, as you and I both know, measurements of recession and recovery have been so manipulated over the years so as to favor the "evidence" of recovery over recession that with "substitutions" and other additions to government reporting, it's actually a SURPRISE that NBER hasn't 'attempted' to call the recession's end sooner! PILE OF "SH*T".... Find a new sabbatical to undertake rather than regurgitating government 'sunshine' for a change....

 
At 4/13/2010 7:38 AM, Blogger juandos said...

I can easily imagine that Noureil Roubini is wondering the samething...

 
At 4/13/2010 8:17 AM, Anonymous Junkyard_hawg1985 said...

Based on the timing for past NBER calls for the timing of a recession, they tend to call the start and end based on overall employment. If they following the pattern of the past few recessions, the end will be December 2009.

 
At 4/13/2010 7:01 PM, Blogger Ritholtz said...

You are a little way behind the curve -- We posted on this back in January:


Dude, Where’s My Recession Bar?
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/01/dude-wheres-my-recession-bar/

 
At 4/13/2010 7:08 PM, Blogger Mark J. Perry said...

Barry: I plead guilty as charged. Now I know.... forever....

Mark

 

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