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On Apr 1, 9:46 am, "Ed Huntress" Yet, as any economist knows, a
recession is two
consecutive quarters of negative growth, and we haven't even had one
single quarter of negative growth reported.

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Ed Huntress

As I understand it, GDP did not decline in the fourth quarter of
2007. I could not find any hard data for the first quarter of 2008,
but even if the GDP did decline in the first quarter, a official
recession could not be declared until after the second quarter showed
a decline. So it will be at least July before one can say we are in a
recession. And the predictions I saw on the internet are for the GDP
growth to be small but positive.


So I did not understand what you were saying.

What you said there is accurate; recessions can only be declared accurately
after the revised figures for GDP come in, which often is a year or more
later. The basic definition is that two sequential quarters of declining GDP
indicate a recession.

But that's an academic definition, and only one of several. In fact, there
are four criteria for a recession that are used by the US government.

That's an aside, however. What I was commenting on was that Lott used two
different explanations of recession -- one to indicate that the 2001
recession actually started earlier than claimed, and a different one to
indicate we aren't in a recession now. As we've seen from him before (and as
some of his fellow econometricians have pointed out in the past), he's using
a sleight-of-hand, switching from one definition to another, to make two
separate cases that should be measured identically if his point is valid.

Aside from that, economists use a variety of current indicators that
correspond well to the state of the GDP and they are handicapping the
question of whether we're now in a recession. Most seem to think we are, or
that we're at the tipping point and on a downward slope. I haven't seen what
the Fed has been saying about it lately so I don't know what the official
position is.

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Ed Huntress