The Recession is Over?

Last week the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) said the recession ended in June 2009.

The NBER can say that the Recession ended over a year ago all they want but in the court of public opinion, the Recession isn't over.

Thankfully, Warren Buffet agreed and had this to say about the Recession.

What does Warren Buffet mean by all this GDP talk?

GDP represents the total dollar value of all goods and services produced over a specific time period. Some people look at GDP as output, others as measuring the size of the economy. It is compared year-to-year or quarter-to-quarter. If some economist somewhere (i.e.-Brad) says GDP is up 7%, it can be interpreted that the economy has grown by 7% over the last year (or past quarter).

What Warren is saying is that our GDP (our output, our income (income approach), our spending (expenditure approach)) needs to get back to pre-recession levels.

We're not there yet.

I like Warren's approach; combining it with unemployment and underemployment can make a strong case that we're still in a recession.

Debate on...