Plan A didn’t work. Plan B didn’t work. I suggest the Fed get going on Plan C.
Category Archives: recession
GDP Prospects: Mean Estimates Fall and Dispersion Increases
One of the points that all the panelists at last Thursday’s event sponsored by WAGE (“The Global Economic Crisis”) agreed on was how quickly the macroeconomic situation has deteriorated. I wanted to see if one could quantify the rapidity with which growth prospects have changed. Here is one perspective, showing the mean forecast from the October and November WSJ surveys of forecasters.
The check is in the mail
Falling gasoline prices will provide some stimulus to the economy. But how much?
Triple “Ut-Oh”: September Trade Release and the End of the Consumer of Last Resort
Brad Setser says “Ut-Oh”, beating me to the punch on the September trade release, which showed US exports plunging. It’s a post that Paul Krugman rightly expresses some angst upon reading. And now I’m going to add two more reasons to worry (not that I think Setser and Krugman aren’t aware of these points).
The Economic Situation: Some Random Snapshots
The latest employment release was stunning, insofar as the NFP employment figure was far below consensus [0]. Net job loss was 240K, rather than 200K; moreover, September job loss was revised upward by 125K. In addition to Jim’s assessment, some reaction is summarized here. The acceleration in net job loss is depicted in Figure 1.
Manufacturers report more bad news
A quick update on the October ISM report.
Another bad month for autos
To say that the U.S. auto sector continues to bleed may be an understatement. Maybe we should start talking about a severed artery.
Some Additional Observations on the 2008Q3 Advance GDP Release
If you went no further than noticing that the q/q annualized growth rate of -0.3% was faster than the -0.5 in the Bloomberg consensus, you might have taken this as good news. I’m not going to say it wasn’t good news (relatively speaking), although negative growth makes the case for recession pretty good according to Jeff Frankel (who is on the NBER BCDC); see also RealTime Economics. However, there are some pretty interesting things that merit additional discussion.
Real GDP fell slightly in 2008:Q3
The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported today that U.S. real GDP fell at a 0.3% annual rate in the third quarter of 2008. That’s the second quarter of negative real GDP growth out of the last four, and puts the cumulative annual growth since 2007:Q3 at an anemic 0.8%.
Yikes! Euro Area Edition
From the FT today:
Survey underlines grim outlook for eurozone
By Ralph Atkins in Frankfurt, Published: October 24 2008 11:23 | Last updated: October 24 2008 18:37The eurozone economy contracted sharply in October as the global bank crisis slammed the brakes on business activity and blackened the outlook for the 15-country region, a closely watched survey indicated on Friday.