Fixed it for you guys.

.. yes that one , he said "still a fringe movement"

I very much liked Thaller's Winner's Curse, especially cross read with things like Damasio's Descartes' Error. I buy the fringe movement.

We have a human nature which is not exactly economic. It's a close enough that we can do markets and economics, but not always well.

That might require that history repeat, rather than just rhyme. After all, in asking for a formal definition you are asking them to pre-select for the next rhyme.

I think the problem is that economics, like the other behavioral sciences, is primarily descriptive rather than predictive. Economics includes broad rules that are pretty good for explaining why things happened but the track record of the discipline in predicting what's going to happen with the accuracy seen in, say, physics or chemistry isn't there.

If the definition isn't going to apply then deciding when there is a recession is meaningless, because you can change the rules at any point.

If anything the NBER has become more clear in how it determines a recession. Looking back at previous announcements they were much more terse with far less information.

Better to stick with a clear definition that doesn't actually require a team of experts in a conference call to determine.

So there was no recession in 2001. Good to know. And even now...no recession. Good to know. Where is that rolling eyes icon when I need it.

If the definition isn't going to apply then deciding when there is a recession is meaningless, because you can change the rules at any point.

This isn't a game, the rules aren't there to keep things "fair". Recession is a diagnosis of the economy, not the definition of an event.

Its easy. Obama can't save us from the Recession if we don't start his administration in a recession. It wouldn't do to have the economy enter a recession after he taks office.

Actually, the 1990/1991 recession works better for political conspiracy stuff. After all, the committee convienently dated the end of the recession just before Clinton was inaugerated, but after he won the election. Thus allowing Clinton to use the recession as a campaign issue, when in fact the recession had ended over a year prior to the election.

The folks in charge of determining whether we’re in recession or not have now declared that we’ve been in one for a whole year, despite not meeting the technical definition.

I believe this sentence has internal contradictions ;-)

Now, it’s been the consensus of economists for some time that the economy is in a recession and things are pretty bad whether we call it “recession,” “depression,” or just “crappy.” But you’d think that a quantitatively oriented group like NBER could come up with a quantifiable measure for recession, preferably one that could be read at the time the data are released, instead of deciding it arbitrarily via phone chit-chat a year after the fact.

That might require that history repeat, rather than just rhyme. After all, in asking for a formal definition you are asking them to pre-select for the next rhyme.

Better to stick with a clear definition that doesn't actually require a team of experts in a conference call to determine. Although I can perhaps see the need to tweak the definition-but to me a floating definition that is so loose that nobody except the experts can define it allows for outside motivations-political or other-to have too much sway in when there is or isn't a recession.