14 Comments Add your own

• 1. Kaus  |  July 31st, 2008 at 11:24 am

  Cool website….however it reminds me of Pat’s prior postings regarding Democratic Presidents are better for the economy…..

• 2. Pat Cunningham  |  July 31st, 2008 at 11:46 am

  I don’t understand your comparison, Kaus, but that’s par for the course. Anyway, now that you’ve raised the subject, let me remind you that Democratic presidential administrations provide higher rates of economic growth and stock market increases, and lower rates of inflation and unemployment. Check it out:
  http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_04/013479.php

• 3. Kaus  |  July 31st, 2008 at 12:04 pm

  You flunked science when it came to formulating the right hypothisis to match your test results. The economy is too complex to derive your preposterous conclusions around some liberal economist trying to make a name for himself. Next thing you’ll be reporting is that Global Warming is caused by Republican Presidents.

• 4. Pat Cunningham  |  July 31st, 2008 at 12:20 pm

  Kaus: What the hell are you talking about? What “hypothesis” to match what “test results”? Can anybody else figure out what Kaus is talking about? If you’re arguing that the economy doesn’t perform better under Democratic presidents than under Republican presidents, show me your evidence. None of your unsupported blatherings. Show me evidence.

• 5. Mike Carroll  |  July 31st, 2008 at 12:34 pm

  Speaking of the economy-The Commerce department reported today that the economy grew last quarter by 2.9%. It is a strange recession.

• 6. Pat Cunningham  |  July 31st, 2008 at 12:42 pm

  Uhhhhh, Mike, it was 1.9 percent, not 2.9 percent. As for the recession, check this:
  July 31 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. economy may have slipped into a recession in the last three months of 2007 as consumer spending slowed more than previously estimated and the housing slump worsened, revised government figures indicated.

  The world’s largest economy contracted at a 0.2 percent annual pace in the fourth quarter of last year compared with a previously reported 0.6 percent gain, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. Growth for the period from 2005 through 2007 was also trimmed.

  The revisions now reinforce measures such as employment and production that already signaled the economy was shrinking. The National Bureau of Economic Research, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based arbiter of economic cycles, defines a recession as a “significant” decrease in activity over a sustained period of time. The declines would be visible in GDP, payrolls, production, sales and incomes.

  “We’re in a recession,” Allen Sinai, chief economist at Decision Economics Inc. in New York, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “It’s going to widen, it’s going to deepen.”

  The government also said incomes grew less than previously thought, raising the risk that consumer spending will again stumble after getting a temporary boost from the tax rebates last quarter.

• 7. Mike Carroll  |  July 31st, 2008 at 1:00 pm

  Pat-Sorry, hit the wrong digit and didn’t check before posting. You are surpassing my stopped watch standard for you.
  My point was, and remains, that we are not in a recession. One quarter of contaction (.2 in the 4th quarter of 2007) followed by 2 quarters of growth (.6 in Q1 and 1.9 in Q2 of 08) does not a recession make per the definition of 2 successive quarters of contraction.
  Unless, of course, your side is trying to change the definition for political purposes. That wouldn’t happen would it?

• 8. Pat Cunningham  |  July 31st, 2008 at 1:14 pm

  So, what you’re saying is that Allen Sinai is wrong. Then this guy must be wrong, too:
  http://www.rgemonitor.com/roubini-monitor/253220/if_it_walks_quacks_and_ducks_like_a_recession_duck_it_is_a_recession_now_the_current_w-shaped_double-dip_recession_may_have_started_in_q4_of_2007_rather_than_q1_of_2008

  And this guy, too (fourth paragraph down):
  http://www.forbes.com/markets/2008/07/31/gdp-employment-update-markets-econ-cx_cg_0731markets10.html

  Hmmmm.

• 9. LD  |  July 31st, 2008 at 1:17 pm

  The Commerce Department said that growth rose 1.9% in the second quarter, lower than the 2.3% expected from economists surveyed by MarketWatch. Growth in the first quarter and fourth quarter of 2007 also were revised lower.

  Separately, the Labor Department said that initial claims for unemployment benefits jumped up 44,000 to 448,000 in the week ended July 26.

  “The data were a little disturbing, especially jobless claims that near critical level,” said Paul Mendelsohn, chief investment strategist at Windham Financial Services. “The GDP also came up short of expectations, and the general feeling is that now the [tax] stimulus is gone, what comes next?

• 10. Mike Carroll  |  July 31st, 2008 at 1:27 pm

  Yes Pat, thats exactly what I’m saying. Now, if we are changing the rules of the game, as some tend to do when a republican is in the White House, let us know so we all can play.

• 11. Pat Cunningham  |  July 31st, 2008 at 1:58 pm

  Hey, Mike, I don’t make or change the rules, and I don’t think it makes much difference whether we call what’s happening now a recession or a picnic in the park. It is what it is. I also don’t think it makes any difference which party has the White House as to whether Allen Sinai and these other guys are right or wrong. I think you’re whistling past the graveyard, and you apparently think I’m hanging crepe without good cause. Vive le difference.

• 12. Millard Fillmore  |  July 31st, 2008 at 2:06 pm

  I think the reality is, given the collection and revision cycles for data, we won\’t know that we were in a recession until we are out of it.

• 13. Pat Cunningham  |  July 31st, 2008 at 2:29 pm

  Recession? What recession? We’re just in one of those upturn down cycles in which smoke and mirrors make it difficult for mere laymen to recognize that happy days are here again and that prosperity is just around the corner. The very same day we start drilling for oil right near the beaches here in the good old US of A, they’ll be giving away the gasoline at the corner filling station, and we’ll never again have to make war in the Middle East. Unless, of course, that scary Barack Obama becomes president. I hear he wants to impose taxes on our electricity. Really. That’s what John McCain said. Yeah, and Obama wants us to burn flags to heat our homes. And he wants us to greet one another with terrorist fist jabs. No kidding. I saw it on Fox News. We better pray that Obama doesn’t win. And let’s pray in our churches before he turns them all into Muslim mosques. That’s his plan, you know.

• 14. Q Jordon  |  August 1st, 2008 at 11:13 am

  People you must remember it is only a recession if your neighbor is out of work, and it is a depression when you are out of work.

  Keep the focus.

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