Re: it's over!

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

> From: Michael Perelman [mailto:michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Ketchup is a vegetable.

I understand why you reject the semi-official NBER's declaration that the US recession is over. But that's because you have a different definition. 

Frankly, I think the NBER's definition is worthwhile (in context), since it says the fall in real GDP ended in Nov. 2001. But that doesn't say that recovery began in Dec. 2001, since the GDP growth has been quite anemic. It's interesting that the NBER waited so long to declare the recession's end because of this... In any event, people have to realize that  even though the recession may be over, the economy can be (and is) in miserable shape. In the old NBER literature, I'm pretty sure that they used to call this phase of the business cycle by the now politically-incorrect name "stagnation."

Further, we need to distinguish the NBER's bourgeois definition of recession (falling real GDP) from a proletarian one (rising unemployment, falling employment). By the latter definition, the recession is hardly over. 

Alas, as long as we have capitalism, the bourgeois definition of recession will be relevant, since the capitalists control the lion's share of the supply of jobs, upon which working people depend for their livelihood. GDP growth is one measure of capitalist health and helps determines the supply of jobs (even as it misses working-class health and environmental health and ...) 

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Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine