Recession ended in June 2009: NBER
20, 2010, 21:30
Washington: The recession ended in June 2009, making it the longest downturn (dec07-june09=1.5 yrs) since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the National Bureau of Economic Research said.
The NBER, considered the arbiter of US recessions, said it chose that month based on examination of data including gross domestic product, employment and personal income. The group's business cycle dating committee, composed of academic economists, is notorious for taking its time in declaring the start and end of recessions.
The committee said it waited to make its decision this time because it wanted to review revised data on national income, released August 27, to get a clearer reading on the path of economic output in 2009. In April, the NBER declined to call the end of the recession, and some of its members said at the time they were concerned the economy could dip back into negative territory. In Monday's announcement, the NBER said any fresh downturn would mark a new recession, not a continuation of the one that began in December 2007. "The basis for this decision was the length and strength of the recovery to date," the NBER said.
US officials have been struggling to find a way to speed up a sluggish recovery that has left unemployment at a painfully high 9.6 percent. The US Federal Reserve's policy-setting committee meets on Tuesday, and is widely expect to discuss whether additional measures are warranted to bolster the economy.
http://biz.zeenews.com/news/news_content.aspx?newscatid=5&newsid=13521Added on 22 Sep 2010
The views are of the official Business Cycle Dating Committee of NBER (USA). Further, it talks about US slowdown which started in Dec 2007. In India, recession actually started around Sep 2008 after Lehman collapse acted as the trigger event following which the world financial system and markets got under panic and started crashing. As supported by the almost vertical and fast rise in equity markets (e.g BSE rose from 800 to 16000 in a matter of few months!), India is believed to have recovered much faster from the recession. India recession is also considered to be less severe as compared to what ppl suffered in US.
Even now when it says the recession got over in June’09, it somewhere admits a possibility of a so called double dip recession AGAIN IN US (‘West’ in general). And that’s the reason it says that such a recession should officially be considered SEPARATELY as a new recession for record keeping purposes.
But the practical fact is US has never really recovered strongly. The recovery has also been a jobless and wek recovery. However, Indian GDP and other data indicates that India is out of recession as such with the only concern at the time being on above the comfort zone inflation side. And even that is slowly expected to come down.
