Comment by mywittyname | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mywittyname | Hacker News Reader

Check this out: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP

1960Q2-1960Q3 - GDP grew, yet this is flagged as a recession.

1981Q3-1983Q1 - GPD grew consistently the entire time, yet this is one of the longer recessions on record.

1990Q3-1991Q2 - GDP only dropped for one quarter, then quickly rebounded, yet it is flagged as a long recession.

2020Q1-2020Q1 - This is flagged as recession, despite being less than a single quarter. By "two consecutive quarters definition, this recession started in 2019Q4 and lasted until 2021Q1. Yet the NBER doesn't flag it this way. If they were "playing politics," they would definitely have made this out to be a larger deal.

It's pretty clear the NBER has never relied entirely on GDP data to determine recessions. Otherwise, there wouldn't be so many recessions with GDP growth.

In case anyone was curious, here are the numbers from the provided link around a couple of the time periods indicated:

> 1960Q2-1960Q3 - GDP grew, yet this is flagged as a recession.

1960-01-01: 542.648

1960-04-01: 541.08

1960-07-01: 545.604

1960-10-01: 540.197

1961-01-01: 545.018

> 2020Q1-2020Q1 - This is flagged as recession, despite being less than a single quarter. By "two consecutive quarters definition, this recession started in 2019Q4 and lasted until 2021Q1.

2019-10-01: 21694.458

2020-01-01: 21481.367

2020-04-01: 19477.444

2020-07-01: 21138.574

2020-10-01: 21477.597

2021-01-01: 22038.226

> Check this out: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP

Check this out: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA (adjusted for inflation, adjusted for population).

The argument is the definition is just GDP growth. Not inflation and per capital adjusted GDP growth. Hence, why I posted the chart I did.

But even with that chart, none of the previous three recessions started with, 'two consecutive quarters of GDP decline.' They may have been preceded by it, but that does not mark the start of any of those recessions. By that definition, the great financial crisis started in 2007Q2, which would be well over a year before the collapse of AIG and Lehman.

There's ample evidence on that chart that the NBER has remained consistent with their definitions over the year. Otherwise, the previous recession would have started at least a quarter earlier.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com