Recession official

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Blue Peter
Posts: 1939
Joined: 24 Nov 2005, 11:09
Location: Milton Keynes

Re: Recession official

Post by Blue Peter »

foodinistar wrote:
Blue Peter wrote:For those who haven't seen, the UK is officially in recession, with the last quarter of 2008 showing a contraction in GDP (1.5%), which means that over 2008, GDP fell by 1.8%,


Peter.
Clarification please. I heard on the radio that GDP in Q4 was down 1.5% on the previous quarter, which was -0.6%. Now, I know that the BBC reporters are a bunch of Arts graduates with no head for numbers, so what is the real situation?
As I understand things, GDP fell 0.6% in Q3, and then a further 1.5% in Q4 (i.e. a restatement of your 2nd sentence),


Peter.
Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the seconds to hours?
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DominicJ
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Joined: 18 Nov 2008, 14:34
Location: NW UK

Post by DominicJ »

A 0.2% increasre in the first quarter, a 0.1% increase in the second then the two drops would, in bad maths, be a 1.8% drop.
There's a similar graph across two pages of today's Guardian but it goes back to 1970. It's easy to see that the last section, since September 92 'Black Wednesday' has been atypical, with continuos blue bars. Before that the red bars occurred quite often, particularly from 70 to 84.
There should have been a mild recession in late 2001 but it was deemed politicaly unacceptable (sept 11).
The recession was "prevented" (simply put off) by Bubbles Greenspan.
The problems the 2001 recession would have solved continued to build, until 2005, when there should have been another, but again, central banks bailed out their political masters.
Not only were inefficient companies saved the success bar was lowered so much that private equity madness like the boots buyout became profitable.
Until the next "snag", in 2007.
Central banks were unable to perform their "miracle" of "saving" the day, so now we get three (possibly 4, dont know enough about '95) recessions all rolled into one combined with the sort of madness that was allowed by the earlier rescue attempts.
I'm a realist, not a hippie
SILVERHARP2
Posts: 611
Joined: 14 Feb 2006, 17:02
Location: DUBLIN

Post by SILVERHARP2 »

DominicJ wrote: There should have been a mild recession in late 2001 but it was deemed politicaly unacceptable (sept 11).
The recession was "prevented" (simply put off) by Bubbles Greenspan.
The problems the 2001 recession would have solved continued to build, until 2005, when there should have been another, but again, central banks bailed out their political masters.
Not only were inefficient companies saved the success bar was lowered so much that private equity madness like the boots buyout became profitable.
Until the next "snag", in 2007.
Central banks were unable to perform their "miracle" of "saving" the day, so now we get three (possibly 4, dont know enough about '95) recessions all rolled into one combined with the sort of madness that was allowed by the earlier rescue attempts.

This is pretty much the "Austrian" perspective which is why bloggers like Mish have been so correct and the Benanke position of subprime being "contained" has been so wrong. Now when you hear gov. talk about spending money to support jobs blah! blah! , protect your "wallets" as they are going to be picked and the spending will be in vain
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