ABOUT CNBC GUEST BLOG
- Busch: Markets Smell a Country Rat
- Schork Oil Outlook: Mission Impossible For The Bears?
- Losey: Asset Allocation At Retirement
- Farrell: Obama Hectored, Ignored and Restricted?
- Don't Dwell on Investment Mistakes; Move on, Like Buffett
- Hirschhorn: Greed...or Fear
- Schork Oil Outlook: Some New Hope For Nat Gas Bulls
- Insights for Growing the Economy: the State of Entrepreneurship
- Tamminen: California Is At It Again
- Dorn: Trading Secrets and Serendipity
MOST SHARED
- The 'Real' Jobless Rate: 17.5% Of Workers Are Unemployed
- Why Amazon Rules Retail
- Wave of Debt Payments Facing US Government
- The Social Media Gaming Threat
- China Eastern to Complete Shanghai Air Buy by End '09
- Paul: Audit the Fed
- JAL Slides to Record Low on Bankruptcy Jitters
- Gold Will Collapse Like Oil Did in 2008: Charts
- Prepare For Large Decline In Stocks, Next Year?
- Lyondell Urged to Consider Reliance Takeover Offer
- Can Murdoch Help Bing Challenge Google and Shift the Content Equation?
- HP's Mark Hurd
- HP Comes in As Expected; Is It Time to Buy?
- 9 Stocks That Play Rising Water Costs: Strategists
- Weis' Deal Likely Won't Change Big Money Contracts
- Gold Prices Can Double in 3 Years: Portfolio Manager
- Nov. 23: Unusual Volume Leaders
- Help Wanted—Please Run $4 Billion University
- Apple Comes to AT&T's Rescue
- How Many US Consumers Will Shop this Weekend?
- Tuesday's Heavy Dose of Data to Dictate 'Risk' Behavior
- Obama says Boosting US Jobs is Top Priority
- GM to Cut up to 9,500 Jobs in Europe
- More Consumers Giving 'Black Friday' the Cold Shoulder
- Prepare For Large Decline In Stocks, Next Year?
- Appeals Court Denies Microsoft's Alcatel Petition
- HP Comes in As Expected; Is It Time to Buy?
- Cramer: What Monday’s Housing Number Really Means
RSS FEED
CNBC Guest Blog
Text Size 
Who died and made the National Bureau of Economic Research boss? During the past two days my in-box has been flooded by NEWS ALERT: RECESSION OFFICIALLY STARTED IN 2007 or some simulacra thereof. So who made the NBER the Supreme Court of recession calls? I asked them. The answer was not really confidence inspiring.
According to their press office, once upon a time the Department of Commerce published a newsletter called Business Dynamics (or something like that, she couldn’t remember the exact name), and business dynamics used to publish data on when recessions began and ended. One day, around 1962, the newsletter started publishing the recession data that they got from NBER instead of calculating their own.
That’s it. No executive order. No medal of honor. No national proclamation. Just a newsletter which the government used to publish, in which they printed the NBER’s recession bars. That’s what makes them official.
Now, the dictionary has a number of definitions of ‘recession’ the most well known (and precise) of which is: two consecutive quarters of negative GDP. I haven’t been able to find a dictionary which defines a recession as ‘whatever the NBER says it is.’
Intrade (which actually has to pay out on their calls) uses the classic dictionary definition; two negative quarters in a row.
I can see your emails flying towards me already: “What, Bowyer, you choose the betting parlors over the economics establishment?”
Yup—after all, the gamblers have had a much better record than the economists have lately.
What are other CNBC.com guest commentators saying?
________________________
 |
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes