Recent Blog Posts
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The Year in Research
Dec 31 20089:13 am EDT -
Mind Your Value Judgements
Dec 19 20087:52 pm EDT -
S.E.C. Short-Sale Ban: Pretty Much Useless
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Advice from Japan: Don't Forget TARP 1
Dec 19 20082:31 pm EDT -
Chart of the Day: Money Market Stress Easing
Dec 18 20088:57 pm EDT -
House Price Bubble Deflated?
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Where Were the Whistleblowers?
Dec 16 200811:03 pm EDT -
It's Just a Recession
Dec 13 200810:20 pm EDT -
Comparing American and European Unemployment Insurance
Dec 12 20087:46 pm EDT -
Back to Normal?
Dec 11 20084:33 pm EDT
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Chart of the Day: Anxiety Returns
Last quarter, the economists polled by the Philadelphia Fed for its Survey of Professional Forecasters said, on average, that the chances of a negative G.D.P. reading for the third and fourth quarter were 29.9 percent and 24.3, respectively.
In today's release, the Philly Fed reports that economists think these probabilities are now much higher: at 34.4 percent and 46.6 percent. The Anxiety Index, "the probability of a decline in real G.D.P. in the quarter after a survey is taken," has been a very reliable indicator of recessions. Since 1968, every quarter in which the index was over 40 percent was later determined to be recessionary:
Forecasts for third-quarter G.D.P. were also reduced from 1.7 percent to 1.2 percent and prospects for job growth were sliced. Economists now think job cutting will extend into the first three months of 2009. That would mean 15 straight months of job losses, similar to the last recession:
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