Tim Kane at the Kauffman Foundation is out with his latest survey of economics bloggers (full disclosure: I am both an adviser to the survey and a participant in it).
In light of today’s abysmal GDP report, the results for one question are particularly relevant:
The latest revisions shows that GDP growth in recent quarters was much lower than previously reported (e.g., only 0.4% in the first quarter versus the prior estimate of 1.9%). So score this one for the 44% of economics bloggers who answered “worse”. (I wrongly answered “same”.)
As always, it’s also fun to look at the word cloud of adjectives the bloggers used to describe the current state of the economy:
Uncertainty still dominates the middle of the nation, but weakness, vulnerability, and fragility have, unfortunately, being gaining territory.
For results from previous surveys, see this earlier post.
Speed of a country’s economic development is very important
Title should be amended to state “Economy is worse than you knew” – as per several persons who noted when you 1st posted your epic comparison of our current malaise vs “the 1st great depression” – you said our current situation don’t measure up because the great depression was both deeper and longer, to which your loyal readers responded, “this thing ain’t even close to being over yet.”
As a respected economist and being one of such fine caliber that you have managed to convince people to pay you for your valuable truths and insights, I should imagine you could reasonably be expected to be able to extrapolate the impact of a long term – decade or more – collapse of the housing industry and markets upon the general economy, especially during a time of widespread corporate banking and mortgage fraud such as falsified deeds and perjured notarized documents.
Failing banks, continuing mass layoffs, high unemployment, decreased sales, decreased manufacturing and decreased shipping, along with record food stamp program participation might be considered to be a large enough body of evidence so as to constitute what economists refer to as a ‘trend’.
I’m sure you can tell us what the economy is likely to do and present it to us – say, one to two years after it does whatever it is likely to do. After all as Benjamin Franklin once noted, “Economist are a lagging indicator.”