Recession's Over, Says Business Cycle Panelist

:shrug: Would be nice. Now, will someone hire me, please?

Recession's Over, Says Business Cycle Panelist
A Member Of The Committee That Determines Recession Chronology Says Jobs Numbers Confirm What Many Suspected

by John Maggs

Tuesday, April 6, 2010


The Great Recession is over, according a member of the committee of professors that is the recognized arbiter on such matters.

Harvard University economist Jeffrey Frankel made the declaration Monday on his personal blog, citing Friday's Labor Department announcement that the U.S. economy created 162,000 jobs in March, the most since March 2007.

President Obama has said that he hopes that the recession has ended, and his top advisers have gone so far as to say that it ended sometime in 2009, but unlike Frankel, they are not charged with making that judgment.

Frankel is one of seven voting members of the Business Cycle Dating Committee, which is part of the National Bureau for Economic Research, a nonpartisan research organization based at Harvard. It has no official role, but for decades it has been the most widely recognized authority on when recessions begin and end. Frankel doesn't speak for the committee, which typically waits a year or so after a recession has ended to make its decisions, but the reasoning in his blog posting reflects the kind of consensus about recessions that the committee has published in the past.

In an interview, Frankel declined to offer a personal view on when the recession ended, but based on his posting and others he made in 2009, he seems to be pointing to June or July of last year, when gross domestic product started growing again after 18 months of contraction.

more...

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/ec_20100406_9468.php

As for the average Joe, oh well.

except for a certain number of peons working on Wall Street who got canned. And even those peons made a lot more than the average Joe.

a few billlion dollars and that people shouldn't complain about their measly savings. Wierd, huh.

Sorry, I have no sympathy for him! :hi:

But it's not over to most Americans until the unemployment rate goes down

tell that to the millions of workers who can't find jobs.

Just thought I'd add to the monologue here :D

pov. :)