Double dip, or just one big economic dive?
By Ezra Klein,
WashPost
Published: August 5
Lately, everyone seems to have his own prediction for whether we’re entering double-dip recession. Former Obama adviser Larry Summers says there’s a “1-in-3 chance.” Ex-Reagan adviser Martin Feldstein pegs it at “50-50.” Matt Yglesias, a fellow at the Center for American Progress, cheekishly pegs the probability at “precisely 31.22 percent.”
The White House is more sanguine. “We do not believe that there is a threat there of a double-dip recession,” press secretary Jay Carney said.
This is a conversation that frustrates Ken Rogoff to no end. Rogoff, a Harvard economist, is co-author, with the Peterson Institute’s Carmen Reinhart, of “This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly.” Their book is perhaps the finest study of financial crises ever published. And when Rogoff hears economists talking about recessions and double-dips, when he sees the markets panic because it just realized we’re not returning to normal anytime soon, he wishes they would have read him more closely.
“The whole mentality of thinking of this as a recession leads to bad forecasts and bad policy,” he says. “It’s just not the right framework.”
(More here.)
WashPost
Published: August 5
Lately, everyone seems to have his own prediction for whether we’re entering double-dip recession. Former Obama adviser Larry Summers says there’s a “1-in-3 chance.” Ex-Reagan adviser Martin Feldstein pegs it at “50-50.” Matt Yglesias, a fellow at the Center for American Progress, cheekishly pegs the probability at “precisely 31.22 percent.”
The White House is more sanguine. “We do not believe that there is a threat there of a double-dip recession,” press secretary Jay Carney said.
This is a conversation that frustrates Ken Rogoff to no end. Rogoff, a Harvard economist, is co-author, with the Peterson Institute’s Carmen Reinhart, of “This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly.” Their book is perhaps the finest study of financial crises ever published. And when Rogoff hears economists talking about recessions and double-dips, when he sees the markets panic because it just realized we’re not returning to normal anytime soon, he wishes they would have read him more closely.
“The whole mentality of thinking of this as a recession leads to bad forecasts and bad policy,” he says. “It’s just not the right framework.”
(More here.)
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