Those in authority are eager for this recession to be over. Barry Ritholtz notes again that The St Louis Fed is tracking the nascent expansion. Mish asks is anyone else sick of this "nascent recovery" talk? And Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism notes that Dave Leonhardt of the New York Times, who represents the consensus view if anyone does, is in the process of revising our expectations downward.
Could the economy be at risk of a double dip?
We’re now in the midst of the worst run of economic news in almost a year. Home sales have dropped. So has consumer confidence. Stocks peaked on Jan. 19.
Economies rarely move in a straight line, and — as the better-than-expected numbers on Tuesday on vehicle sales suggested — the recent run of bad data is probably overstating the troubles. But whatever you thought at the start of the year about the recovery — strong, moderate, fragile — you probably need to be more pessimistic today.
Optimistic views of our prosperous future are all based on what economists call The Business Cycle. This picture explains it very nicely.
In the "Great" recession, as the story goes, we've had an atypically long recession with a peakier peak and a troughier trough. But now the nascent recovery has arrived. The St. Louis Fed has called the trough as being June, 2009, with our expansion phase beginning the next month.
The next 3 videos from the movie Being There (1979) capture perfectly the "deep reasoning" behind this business cycle understanding of where we stand in 2010. I hope you know the movie, but if you don't, you need to know that Peter Sellers (in his last film) plays the mentally impaired "Chance the Gardener," who becomes the highly respected, powerful Chauncey Gardener over the course of the film. Jack Warden plays the President, and Melvyn Douglas plays Benjamin Turnbull "Ben" Rand, a trusted adviser to and friend of the President.
The short first video gives you the context. The second explains the business cycle and the third shows its application in modern policy. There's only about 4 minutes of film altogether. Watch the videos in order. Here you will learn the deepest secrets of America's leading thinkers on how economies work. Enjoy!
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