Barkley wrote:
> Funny thing is that the latest forecasts in
>The Economist have positive growth rates for
>the next year for all the leading economies.
Even positive growth rates can be a problem if the growth isn't fast enough
to absorb increases in the labor force and deal with the fall in demand
that occurs (cet. par.) as labor productivity rises.
>But, it does seem that things are slowing down.
>And, historically, downturns have always been
>badly forecast, and even the short ones tend
>to go down sharply.
forecasting seems a matter of choosing which macro-variables are best to
extrapolate.
in a different message, Barkley wrote:
> For what it's worth (not necessarily all that much),
>in this mornings macroseminar in my department,
>the most right-wing member who is also a professional
>investment adviser declared that the recession in the
>US actually began on Oct. 1.
Yesterday's L.A. TIMES had an article by a conservative (John Makin of the
American Enterprise Institute) predicting a serious recession and another
set of conservatives (Martin and Kathleen Feldstein) arguing that it's good
that the US economy is slowing down.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
