Monday, June 8, 2009

Krugman Sees U.S. Recession Ending Soon

The U.S. economy probably will emerge from the recession by September, economist and NYT columnist Paul Krugman said today.

“I would not be surprised if the official end of the U.S. recession ends up being, in retrospect, dated sometime this summer,” he said in a lecture at the London School of Economics. “Things seem to be getting worse more slowly. There’s some reason to think that we’re stabilizing.”

Of course, I agree with Krugman on this point. In fact, my guess is that when the NBER finally dates the end of this recession, it will probably mark the end somewhere near March of this year.

The fact that Krugman, along with me, is one of the few to forecast the end to the recession is really quite fascinating, since as I have commented before he is clueless when it comes to understanding the business cycle.

This demonstrates that if you follow the numbers you can get a good sense as to trends in the economy. And, as I have also said before, Krugman is a first rate data watcher. Which forces the question, what are most other economists doing?

1 comment:

  1. Wenzel,

    Not believing that theft is the basis of an actual economic recovery?

    That's the camp I sit in.

    I mean what does a "recovery" even mean in the current context? You think people, having just been majorly burned and with NOTHING fundamental or substantial having changed over the past few months, will suddenly start going back into debt to fuel their excessive lives?

    I don't know... I am skeptical.

    ReplyDelete