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"Ready For Recession?"
Housing to push economy to edge of recession
But UCLA forecast also notes growth in other areas should aid a recovery
 | A home is shown for sale in Lee's Summit, Mo., earlier this month |
LOS ANGELES - Ongoing weakness in the housing market will push the national economy to the brink of recession, but growth in other areas should put the country back on a slow road to recovery by 2009, according to an economic forecast released Wednesday.
The quarterly Anderson Forecast by the University of California at Los Angeles predicts growth in the gross domestic product of just over 1 percent for the fourth quarter of 2007 and first quarter of 2008.
Economic growth will remain “tepid” for the remainder of 2008 and return to 3 percent in 2009, said David Shulman, senior economist for the forecast.
That growth is just above the traditional definition of a recession — two consecutive quarters of decline in gross domestic product.
“Of course, when the economy slows to a 1 percent pace, it runs the risk of falling into an actual recession, just as when an airplane’s velocity dips down to its ’stall speed’ and falls out of the sky,” Shulman wrote.
The declining housing market could remain at the heart of the nation’s economic woes for some time.
Shulman lowered his forecast for housing starts to an annual rate of about 1 million to 1.1 million, down from a range of 1.2 million to 1.3 million.
That outlook is less optimistic than one presented Tuesday by the National Association of Realtors, which projected construction of new homes will fall to 1.4 million this year from 1.8 million last year.
Shulman also expects housing prices to plunge 10 percent to 15 percent before they start to recover, sometime in 2009.
“The small recent minimal declines represent not the end, but rather the beginning of what will be a very painful decline,” he wrote.
Housing woes have already started to affect consumer spending and are expected to keep doing so through 2008, the forecast said.
Auto sales will reach only 15.7 million units in 2008 — the lowest rate since 1998, Shulman predicted. Housing-related purchases, such as furniture and appliances, were also expected to decline.
Still, strong global demand for U.S.-produced goods and reduced domestic demand for imports should fuel economic growth of about 1.8 percent for 2008, according to the report. Corporate investment in software and equipment was also predicted to fuel modest growth.
Other key factors affecting the economic slowdown could include further credit tightening, which could discourage corporate investment, and the willingness of foreign investors to hold dollar-based assets, the report said.
Shulman expects Congress to pass tough new regulations for the mortgage industry as a result of rising defaults and the demise of the subprime lending market.
Congress is also likely to increase the price limit for home mortgages that government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can buy.
While regulators focus on the role of lenders in the current crisis, little attention will be given to homebuyers, who “got caught up in the real estate mania seeking a quick path to wealth,” Shulman wrote.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20730894/
What's a recession? How do we know if we're in one?
A recession is when your neighbor loses his job.
A depression is when you lose your job.
The difference between the two terms is not very well understood for one simple reason: There isn’t a universally agreed upon definition. If you ask 100 different economists to define the terms recession and depression, you’d get at least 100 different answers. I’ll try to summarize both terms and explain the differences between them in a way that almost all economists could agree with.
Recession: The Newspaper Definition
The standard newspaper definition of a recession is a decline in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for two or more consecutive quarters.This definition is unpopular with most economists for two main reasons. First, this definition does not take into consideration changes in other variables. For example this definition ignores any changes in the unemployment rate or consumer confidence. Second, by using quarterly data this definition makes it difficult to pinpoint when a recession begins or ends. This means that a recession that lasts ten months or less may go undetected.
Recession: The BCDC Definition
The Business Cycle Dating Committee at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) provides a better way to find out if there is a recession is taking place. This committee determines the amount of business activity in the economy by looking at things like employment, industrial production, real income and wholesale-retail sales. They define a recession as the time when business activity has reached its peak and starts to fall until the time when business activity bottoms out. When the business activity starts to rise again it’s called an expansionary period. By this definition, the average recession lasts about a year.Recession? Depression? What's the difference?
Depression
Before the Great Depression of the 1930s any downturn in economic activity was referred to as a depression. The term recession was developed in this period to differentiate periods like the 1930s from smaller economic declines that occurred in 1910 and 1913. This leads to the simple definition of a depression as a recession that lasts longer and has a larger decline in business activity.The Difference
So how can we tell the difference between a recession and a depression? A good rule of thumb for determining the difference between a recession and a depression is to look at the changes in GNP. A depression is any economic downturn where real GDP declines by more than 10 percent. A recession is an economic downturn that is less severe.By this yardstick, the last depression in the United States was from May 1937 to June 1938, where real GDP declined by 18.2 percent. If we use this method then the Great Depression of the 1930s can be seen as two separate events: an incredibly severe depression lasting from August 1929 to March 1933 where real GDP declined by almost 33 percent, a period of recovery, then another less severe depression of 1937-38. The United States hasn’t had anything even close to a depression in the post-war period. The worst recession in the last 60 years was from November 1973 to March 1975, where real GDP fell by 4.9 percent. Countries such as Finland and Indonesia have suffered depressions in recent memory using this definition.
Now you should be able to determine the difference between a recession and a depression without resorting to the poor humor of the dismal scientists.
If you have a question you'd like answered about recessions, depressions, or any other economics topic, please use the feedback form.
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