Talk:Recession

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I'm a little concerned that this article is too focussed on American recessions - the article on "Global recession" is fairly vague. The Japanese/Asian recession in the 1980s/1990s might be a starting point. Obviously America isn't the only country with a pronounced economic cycle. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.51.102.122 (talk) 07:28, 4 March 2008 (UTC)


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?But global warming may also lead to ressesion and we need to start recycling. 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 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
--user:voidvector

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?

Contents

[edit] 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)

[edit] Redirects

Economic depression and depression (economics) link back to recession. A depression, as far as I know, are not the same as recession. Maybe we should consider ranaming this article. MPS 18:34, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

They're not identical, but they are very similar, and I reckon the one article will probably do for both. The Land 19:35, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree that they belong in the same article, but people like me who are not familiar with the nuances of the subject will assime that a redirect to "recession" means that they are exactly the same. Do we need to define recession versus depression upront? Should we change the artciel name to "economic downturn]] and redirect bothe recession and depression to this main article? MPS 21:21, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
No, people needn't assume they are the same, and the article can distinguish between the two. Exactly what the article is called I'm not that worried, but I see no harm in leaving it as we are. My motivation is that it's better to let one article grow until it needs to be split than to have several which each get less attention and end up worse for it. The Land 13:37, 31 January 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Verbiage in "Causes of recession"

Okay, I'm not an uneducated person, but I must note that this section is cram-packed with enormous, technical words that most "laymen" would not understand, including myself for a few. Is there any chance someone could rewrite some of these more technichal terms so that anyone (such as a junior high-level student writing a report) could understand it? I don't think a young student's report would look too good with words such as "cyclical", "endogenous" and "exogenous" in it. Just my thoughts. --Schmendrick 21:49, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Depression other than Great Depression?

The "Depression" section only talks about the Great Depression. Can we get info on depression in general, and/or how it relates to recession? --Spoon! 05:28, 8 September 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Depression versus Recession

Each of these topics should have it's own article, they are related but different. MapleTree 11:38, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Please supply examples to recessions and their causes in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sandman2007 (talk • contribs) 12:03, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] possible copyright violations, Great Depression text

I removed several sections from this page. Most of it was because text on the page included passages that seemed to be lifted entirely from [1] and [2], which I'm pretty sure are copyrighted materials (howstuffworks.com has a copyright notice at the bottom of its pages, at the very least) and as such are possible copyright violations. In particular, information about 2 different definitions of what a recession is and information regarding how governments attempt to shift a nation's economy out of a recession was removed.

There was also a lengthy discussion about the Great Depression that was out of place on this page. This has been removed to here, and if anyone wants to place it in the correct location (I suggest merging it into Great Depression if it isn't simply duplicated information from there). It follows:

==The Great Depression (October 1929 to the late 1930s)== {{main|Great Depression}} Prior to the Great Depression in the US, speculative investing in the [[stock market]] occurred, and this created artificially high stock prices. Shares were also used as a partial collateral for loans to buy more stocks (ie. buying stocks on margins as little as 10%). When share prices plummeted, people who had bought on margin were forced to pay their 90% loans used to buy their stocks; to pay their loans, they sold stocks, driving prices down still further in a [[vicious circle]]. Financial institutions -- banks, etc. -- collapsed, triggering a monetary crisis. This analysis has been sharply disputed by [[monetarist]] economists such as [[Milton Friedman]] (dubbing the Great Depression the [[Great Contraction]]) who wrote that the Great Depression would have been merely a "garden-variety recession" if it weren't for the response of the [[Federal Reserve]] to the following [[bank run|runs on the banks]] and that most investments were made unsound by the effects of a massive deflation, the increase in real interest rates and decline of real personal and business incomes. This led to the famous run on the banks, in which massive withdrawals of bank deposits led some banks to collapse, confirming investors' fears and inspiring more withdrawals. From the beginning to end, it has been calculated that the [[money supply]] declined by one third thus forcing down production while prices adjusted. [[John Maynard Keynes]], a famous British economist, believed that the classical business cycle theory broke down when interest rates went below about 2%. People then had no incentive to save money, because they earned so little interest. This meant that banks did not receive money with which they could make loans. The lack of loan money disrupted business, according to Keynes. Keynes also had written a book -- The Economic Consequences of the Peace -- saying that the World War I Allies demanded far too much in reparations from Germany, etc., and that this demand for reparations was at least in part to blame for the lack of trade and economic collapse. Other people often blame very high tariffs, namely the [[Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act|Smoot-Hawley tariffs]] as a cause of the depression. Each country enacted high protectionist tariffs to make imports very expensive; but because all countries did this, that led to a breakdown in international trade. Because trading is good in economics -- people do not trade unless there is a benefit to each side -- a breakdown in trading is bad in economic terms. To date no repetitions of the Great Depression have happened in the industrial world{{Fact|date=March 2007}}. However, many Latin American countries suffered a severe economic slump coupled with high inflation in the 1980s, Japan suffered from a deep recession during the 1990s, and the former [[Communist state]]s of central and eastern Europe also fell into an economic depression during the transition to capitalist economies. Additionally, the term "depression" may be used to describe the situation of many poorer countries in the [[Third World]] (although in many cases these countries never achieved sustained [[economic development]] in the first place).

--BlackAndy (talk) 23:04, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Need for real data and examples in economics and financial articles

The theories and the models in this field are approximate explanations. I think they must be supported or illustrated with real data.

I have added several sections to the article, some of them use real data. I hope that will make it easier to the readers to follow what the article is about.

--Chakreshsinghai (talk) 17:25, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Use of USA data

One of the editors had complained about the use of recession data from USA.

I agree that the perspective must not be local. However the use of data from USA in this and other articles is appropriate:

  • The USA data is followed and understood most widely.
  • USA economy has the most impact.

However I think the article can use more discussion of the global aspects of recessions. Please help by adding to the section I have started.--Chakreshsinghai (talk) 17:29, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

That statement is subjective - many now turn to China as a guage for the world economy.

[edit] Possibility of a 2007-2008 recession

I think it is unlikely that the recession will be regarded to have started in 2007, since the GDP growth in the last quarter of 2007 was positive, although small. If there is a recession (I am not sure), I would expect its start to be placed in January 2008 or later. I am thinking of deleting 2007 from the heading of the section.--Chakreshsinghai (talk) 18:34, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Looks like we are almost there. Still if GDP growth is 0.1% this quarter, the two quarter definition will not be satisfied. However if the magnitude of later decline is as deep as some suggest, NBER may mark the beginning in the first quarter.--Chakreshsinghai (talk) 02:59, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
Some folks (TrimTabs) claim having seen the bottom. We'll see.--Chakreshsinghai (talk) 15:17, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Nouriel Roubini scenario

I think his analysis is quite valuable, since it links related events, many of which have actually happend, just as he said they could.

It provides a good explanation of how this recession has progressed, and how it is likley to impact things.

--Chakreshsinghai (talk) 02:23, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Newbie questions

"Functionally, there is no difference between deficit spending and tax cuts. Both add money to the economy. Every form of money is a form of debt. History shows every depression in American history began with several years of federal surpluses, which removed debt (money) from the economy."

Sorry, new to wiking... I'm unclear who wrote the above. As a lay-reader on this topic, I would really benefit from some further explanation of the above statements, as well as more practical examples. The logic of these statements is not clear in my mind.

Certianly if the statements are true and proven, they would shed some very new and interesting light on the issue for me.

Thank you, J Savory bootmyhead@yahoo.com Jonasavory (talk) 21:04, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

It just plain needs to be sourced, for one thing. Seems to violate NPOV, IMHO. Belgarion89 (talk) 15:55, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
I've removed the paragraph. The last sentence is factually incorrect, and the first two need some qualification to avoid POV issues (and, as Belgarion89 observed, also need to be sourced). Cournot (talk) 22:51, 17 March 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Suspicious Link

One of the external links for this page is entitled: "Business Cycle Expansions and Contractions, the National Bureau Of Economic Research" but leads instead to what appears to be a commercial site: http://www.exitmundi.nl/oilcrash.htm.

I cannot find the original intended destination for this link in the edit histories because it was changed quite some time ago. This link does need to be repaired, though, because of the importance of the NBER; some users may want to travel to the NBER's site from here. Thanks to whomever can fix this. 132.161.164.17 (talk) 23:40, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Is the 2008 "recession" unusual?

I've lived through many recessions, but I don't remember so much of the fear and loathing, not to mention "is it a recession or not?" debate in any of them. The way the media and some people are reacting, it seems as if they've forgotten we had a recession back in 2001, and much of the 80s and 90s were lived under recession and gee, the world didn't come to an end. Where this pertains to this article is whether there is something different about what's going on right now that for some reason sets the current situation apart from past recessions (yes I know it's tied to the subprime thing, but even that shouldn't be generating as much outright fear as it is). Obviously we can't just speculate - so has there been any media discussion as to why people have spent the better part of a year now in fear mode (to the point where it has been said the recession could already be turning around by the time it's finally declared one officially). 68.146.41.232 (talk) 14:49, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] U.S. transfer

This is supposed to be an article about recessions in general. Articles about U.S. recession should be transferred to another page about the history of U.S. recessions. The article Possibility of a 2008 recession should be transferred to Economic crisis of 2008. --- 66.81.146.66 (talk) 18:16, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

So transfer it over.--Roxie Yasoxiez (talk) 19:05, 30 April 2008 (UTC)