Skip to main content

Recession Is Over! (if you want it)


Rejoice: the recession is over, at least according to the NBER's Business Cycle Dating Committee, which recently declared that our latest recession ended in June 2009.

This is awesome news for those of us living in September 2010 and in a little sphere of existence I like to call, "the real world". We can now celebrate the official end of what's been dubbed, "The Great Recession", a six quarter period of negative growth that now stands as a post-war record.

I'm sure Americans will be pleased to know that the GDP numbers and government unemployment statistics, which purposely gloss over the problems of longer-term, structural unemployment by omitting discouraged workers from the tally, are now signalling a light at the end of the economic tunnel.

We discussed the silliness (and uselessness) of the NBER committee's recession pronouncement rituals back in December 2008, when the same committee officially blessed the start of our "now-ended" slowdown.

However, if you go back 11 months to January of 2008, we were already discussing the likelihood that we had entered a recession in real terms if statistics were properly adjusted for inflation.

Our matter of fact view on the economy was repeated in May of 2008 when Bloomberg TV was running a special called, "Surviving the Slowdown". It seems anyone not immersed in academia or connected to the government was able to see these things clearly for themselves at the time.

Which brings me to Robert Murphy's article at Mises.org entitled, "Hooray, the Recession Is Over!". Aside from parsing the NBER announcement and mocking the economic establishment, Murphy makes a much needed point about the officially sanctioned history of recession and recovery that will likely emerge from the NBER's data and viewpoint. Everyone who studies economic history or is just reading about the current economic cycle should take 5 minutes to read it for that insight.

Related articles and posts

1.
Now can we call it a recession? - Finance Trends.

2. Buffett: We're still in recession (CNBC) - PragCap.

3. For many of us, the recession lives on - Washington Post.

Popular posts from this blog

Seth Klarman: Margin of Safety (pdf)

Welcome, readers! Signup for free email updates at the Finance Trends Newsletter . Update: PDF links removed due to DMCA notice. Please see our extensive Klarman book notes below. New visitors, please check the Finance Trends home page for all new posts. Here's something for anyone who has been trying to get a look at Seth Klarman's now famous, and out of print, 1991 investment book, Margin of Safety .  My knowledge of value investing is pretty much limited to what I've read in Ben Graham's The Intelligent Investor (the book which originally popularized the investment concept of a "Margin of Safety"), so check out the wisdom from Seth Klarman and other investing greats in our related posts below. You can also go straight to Ronald Redfield's Margin of Safety book notes .    Related posts: 1. Seth Klarman interviews and Margin of Safety notes     2. Seth Klarman: Lessons from 2008 3. Investing Lessons from Sir John Templeton 4.

Slate profiles Victor Niederhoffer

Slate's recent profile of writer/speculator, Vic Niederhoffer has been getting some attention from traders and finance types in recent days. I thought we'd take a look at it here too, to offer up some possible educational value from Vic's experiences with trading and loss. Here's an excerpt from Slate's profile of Victor Niederhoffer : " I've enjoyed getting your e-mails. It sounds like you've thought a lot about being wrong. Well, the reason you contacted me, to call a spade a spade, is that I'm sort of infamous for having made a big, notorious, terrible error not once but twice in my market career. Let's talk about those errors. The first was your investment in the Thai baht, which pretty much wiped you out when the Thai stock market crashed in 1997. I made so many errors there it's pathetic. I made one of my favorite errors: "The mouse with one hole is quickly cornered." That is key. There are certain decisions you make in li

Moneyball: How the Red Sox Win Championships

Welcome, readers . T o get the first look at brand new posts (like the following piece) and to receive our exclusive email list updates, please subscribe to the Finance Trends Newsletter .   The Boston Red Sox won their fourth World Series title of t he 21st century this we ek. Having won their first Se ries in 86 years back in 200 4, the last decade-plus has marked a very strong return to form for one of baseball's oldest big league clubs. So how did they do it? Quick background: in late 2002, team own er and hedge fund manager, John W. Henry (with his partners ) bought the Boston Red Sox and its historic Fenway Park for a reported sum of $ 695 million. Henry and Co. quickly set out to find their ideal General Manager (GM) to help turn around their newly acquired, ailing ship. This brings us to one of my fav orite scenes from the 2011 film , Moneyball , in which John W. Henry (played by Ar liss Howard) attempts to woo Oakland A's GM Billy Beane (Brad Pi