Talk:Misery index (economics)

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Umm, why is President Bush Jr. ranked 5th before Truman, if the indicated average in the table is higher for his term? Besides, I went to the site and took the data, and the average (calculated by summing up the 67 months starting Jan 2001 and ending Jul 2001) is now 8.04 for President Bush. Did I calculate it right? If so, shouldn't the table be updated? Bravada, talk - 10:23, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

As per a BusinessWeek blog, the original Misery Index was invented by Arthur Okun. Please see http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/economicsunbound/

Is there a source for the Misery Index-crime rate claim? Jamiem 21:28, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

The last entry is fast becoming out of date (14 months old). Unemployment is down to 4.7% (US Average). Can we update this? talk 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I noted this, and have taken a stab at calculating a current figure (as of 04 April 2008) for G. W. Bush. I am not certain if my calculations are done the same as the others. I calculated a monthly inflation rate for each month from Consumer Price Index data [1], then took that number, e.g., 1.00324, to the 12th power to calculate an effective annual rate, then subtracted 1 from that number, then multiplied by 100 for a percentage figure that goes from 0 to 100 (it can be and was in several instances a negative number). Then for each month I added the Seasonally Adjusted Unemployment Rate [2] percentage (a number like the inflation rate like 1 percent) to come up with the monthly MI. Then I averaged them over the entire period. This number comes out to be 8.01, with a minumum of -4.2 in November of 2005 (no other President presided over a month of deflation?) and a maximum of 20.8 in September of 2005.Weyandt (talk) 19:07, 4 April 2008 (UTC)