Talk:Recession
From Academic Kids
The greatest, worldwide recession that humanity has ever experienced was the Great Depression (late 1920s and 1930s); other notable recessions include the [Oil Crisis]? in the 1970s.
What about the 1982-1983 recession? Is that considered just an extension of the 1970s recessions? I consider it to be a full-blown recession in its own right, but I'm a total ignoramus when it comes to economics. I'm also biased because that one hit right when I was entering the labor market. Also, my dad was laid off from a 25 year gig in '82. The memory the early 1980s is bitter for me, as the economic changes specific to labor economics seem more structural than cyclical, and ruthlessly cruel to boot, at least from the perspective of a lamer like me who grew up with mid 20th century American level of expectations, add to this the effects of a mediocre 1970's American K-12 education, and you've probably got me started on something way too editorial even for a Talk: entry in the wikipedia.
- this is now partially reflected in the article as Marx's point of view, but of course it's all of labor economics who argues this. Not that there is any serious labor or welfare economics in the wikipedia... its often censored by the "economists" i.e. sociopaths educated only in the neoclassical economics who don't even understand the known limits of the classical OR neoclassical models, and clearly haven't read Smith, Ricardo, Mill, or hell even Friedman or Lucas.
- The most "official" recession dating is done by NBER. Link below. Most of my economic classes used their data for business cycle dating. Problems with them is that they revise ("2nd guess") very often.
- link: http://www.nber.org/cycles.html
- Based my economic studies, here is what caused past recessions:
- 1973 : Oil supply shock
- 1980 + 1981 : Volker engineered recession with monetary policy to lower inflation
- 1990 : lack of consumer confidence
- 2001 : over investment
Since the media, and to at least some extent the econ community seem to agree on a definition of two consecutive quarters of economic shrinkage, it would seem at least theoretically possible to catalog all recessions since the widespread recording of economic statistics.
- Yes, but 'economic shrinkage' is itself a term worthy of contention.
- GDP and GNP are accepted by NO SERIOUS ECONOMIST as actually indicative of anything but money changing hands - can't tell long from short term trading, can't tell much about long term human capital growth, probably gives negative data on human well-being insofar as we spend money on 'negative products' to keep us safe, from things that we wouldn't have experienced (like pollution) without so much 'economic growth'. The theory of uneconomic growth is all about this... So it is the POLITICIANS that agree on this definition, and the MEDIA... not the real economists. If you can find a single economist who thinks that GDP and GNP are meaningful measures, by all means, name the guy, and cite his rationale for running the money supply based on those numbers. It's just a bad practice that evolved out of fear of doing anything else...
- Galbraith material comes from his book "Money: where it came from, where it went" and that's a pretty good source for anyone else who wants to get this. BTW Galbraith devotes CHAPTERS to reserve policy and its politics, so there's no excuse for no separate article on this.
I would like to see seperate articles for the 2001 recession, and the 1991 recession.
- When President Franklin D. Roosevelt entered office in 1933, he was intending to continue a relatively conservative fiscal policy to placate his business critics (Herbert Hoover in particular had warned him that any controversial early action would affect business confidence very adversely). However, after Black Monday Roosevelt was forced to change his mind
Was there a four year lag to Roosevelt's reaction?
Money
I can see what this para is trying to do, but it does it too badly to leave it in. Best start from scratch if we want something along those lines in the article.
"It can be difficult to understand the seeming decrease in available money during a recession when no money is physically destroyed. Suppose you have 250 million people living in a huge hall and there is a recession in the hall, no money went into or left the hall. Where did all the money go? In fact money actually can be destroyed, but it's hard to see where and when. While the amount of "hard" money (also referred to as Central Bank Money) can only be changed within certain restrictions, this is not the total amount of money that an economy relies on. The latter is a multiple of the former, determined by factors like the speed of exchange and the reserve policy of a central bank, or of other banks who borrow from that central bank." Rd232 16:59, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
