Category The 2008-9 recession
The more things change…
A cartoon by Low on the 1932 banking crisis (HT Luke Ashworth):
The US GDP revisions aren’t as bad as you think. They’re much worse.
The BEA's advance estimate for 2011Q2 GDP growth was accompanied by news that 2011Q1 growth had been revised from 1.8% to 0.4%. This is bad enough, but the data revisions are much, much worse than that. Here is a graph of the data that were archived by the St Louis Fed last month, along with […]
Ontario’s Recession Battered Families
Recessions generate many statistics but in the end its all about the people and their families. Statistics Canada today released family income data for sub-provincial areas for 2009 taken from the 2009 personal income tax returns.
This is what a balance-sheet recession looks like, and it’s not pretty
I had never heard the expression "balance-sheet recession" before this recent episode, and it's time I got around to a comparison of the household balance sheets of the US and Canada. Of all my "Canada is not the US" posts, this is the one that makes me most grateful.
The sources of the Canadian recession and recovery
This is one of those posts where I present data in graph form so that people – in particular, I – can get a feel for what's been happening. Today's entry is on how the various components of aggregate demand contributed to the recession and recovery. We sometimes get too focused on the particularities of […]
Money, interest, employment, and luck
Monetary disequilibrium theorists must face this question: "If this recession was caused by an excess demand for money, how come interest rates are so low? Doesn't an excess demand for money mean an excess supply of bonds and rise in interest rates?" [Warning: this post is long, rambling, and unclear. I ought to tear it […]
Real wages, the recession that was, and the recession that wasn’t
After the tech bubble burst, the United States went into recession, but Canada did not. This isn't to say that we escaped entirely unscathed; there were some nervous moments, and the Bank of Canada saw fit to reduce its overnight rate target from 5.75% to 2.25% between January and November 2001. But if you look […]
The recovery picks up speed
Today's GDP numbers are a happy contrast to the sort of numbers we were seeing six months ago: Recent data from the US are also encouraging. The recession is over, and the end of the recovery is getting closer.
Tracking the Bank of Canada’s forecasts during the recession
Globe and Mail journalist Jeremy Torobin called me a while back to talk about Bank of Canada forecasts for this article, and that call prompted me to go back and look at how the Bank's forecasts evolved during the recession.
Cyclical productivity growth and the manufacturing sector
This post was written by Simon van Norden of HEC-Montréal. Here is a quick graph from FRED of US economy-wide vs manufacturing employment growth: One of the questions that I've had is whether the more rapid productivity growth in aggregate was the result of (a) faster productivity growth across lots of sectors, or (b) concentrating […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
Recent Comments