Commentators are taking note of the five-year anniversary of the fiscal stimulus that President Obama enacted during his first month in office. Those who don’t like Obama are still asking “if the fiscal stimulus was so great, why didn’t it work?” What is the appropriate response?
The recent release of a revised set of GDP statistics by Britain’s Office for National Statistics showed that growth had not quite, as previously thought, been negative for two consecutive quarters in the winter of 2011-12. The point, as it was reported, was that a UK recession (a second dip after the Great Recession of 2008-09) was now erased from the history books — and that the Conservative government would take a bit of satisfaction from this fact. But it should not.
The NBERBusiness Cycle Dating Committee this morning posted an announcement that it had met in person April 8 – an infrequent event – but that it had not yet decided to call the trough in the recession that began in December 2007. The meeting has led to lots of questions from the press over the weekend, for stories that appeared today, and then more questions today in response to those stories. Here are some of the questions that have come up the most often, and my own personal answers, speaking for myself and not the Committee of which I am a member.